


Mine

by LiinHaglund



Series: Possessive Pronouns [1]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence - Pre-Thor (2011), Canon? What Canon?, Culture Shock, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Incest, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Jötunn Loki, Kidnapping, Laufey Likes To Read, Laufey is not amused, Loki Needs a Hug, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Odin's Parenting, Out of Character, Politics, Post-War, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Thor (2011), Royalty, Scandal, Underwater Sex, Álfheimr | Alfheim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:16:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiinHaglund/pseuds/LiinHaglund
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jotunheim still grieves the crimes committed during the war when Asgard's two young princes follow overly curious Jotun teenagers back to the frozen realm, and one of the princes has a distinctly Jotun name.</p><p>Loki doesn't know much about his heritage, but he knows he's no son of Odin.</p><p>[Edited 2017-12-22]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gathering Of Giants

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't PG-13, nor is it meant for sensitive people.
> 
> Edited December 22 (2017) to fix some issues, flesh out scenes and correct grammar. Also. this has grown by about 30k words since I first published. The plot... thickens.

The Einherjar guards following Loki and Thor on their outing had quickly spotted the two lone Frost Giants sneaking into Asgard. The caves in the mountains proved to have an unknown portal to Jotunheim which the giants had used to travel with. Thor and Loki had, by sheer bad luck as far as Loki was concerned, been close by where the giants had been spotted. Evidently they were not entirely mindless as they hastily fled back from where they came.

And, Thor being Thor, the brute just had to follow.

“Stop, let us plan this, Thor!”

“Brother, if we do not go -”

“It could be _a trap_!” Loki pointed out.

Thor held up Mjolnir. “I will teach them a lesson they will not soon forget. They are not allowed to trespass.” Thor ran into the portal.

Loki gritted his teeth and followed. Someone needed to save Thor from himself, and since no more royal children were forthcoming it was his job to be the voice of reason.

Once through the portal and into the frozen wintry landscape that was clearly Jotunheim they followed the two Frost Giants, though their pace was slower due to the unfamiliarity they had with the landscape. The wind was merciless and the ground slippery, but they pressed on. Loki abruptly stopped Thor when the two Frost Giants that had entered Asgard were met up by two bigger giants. Their worn faces gave their age away.

“Thor, look! They are youngsters,” Loki shouted over the howling wind. “Look at how much smaller they are!”

“They -”

“I _know_ ,” Loki said in a much calmer voice, trying to calm his brother with his tone of voice, “I know. But if it was simply two curious children we cannot just slay them... it could just as well have been _us_! You cannot say we have never ended up in places by accident.”

Thor continued to approach the Frost Giants, if a little less cocksure of himself than before. He was not the complete idiot Loki sometimes accused him of being, but he was every bit as reckless and hotheaded as people claimed in their gossip. Loki followed his brother hesitantly, all the while he kept a keen eye on their surroundings in case more giants showed up. He had no choice but to back his brother up alone until the guards could alert Odin.

Or one of the army officers.

Or Heimdall.

Or _anyone_ , really.

He wanted to make it back home alive, thank you very much. They were alone in a foreign realm and Loki knew all too well that this could end horribly. He had grown up on horror stories about the fearsome Frost Giants, he was not about to underestimate the danger they were both in.

And, even if all the stories were nothing but lies, they were still the ones currently trespassing into a hostile realm. They had no authority here. No allies. Plenty of potential enemies, though, and that was a terrifying thought.

More adult giants gathered around the group, keeping the smallest protected in the center. Loki swallowed hard. He had certainly heard stories of the Frost Giants and seen some pictures, but he had never been to Jotunheim, had never seen them in the flesh before. They were _big_ , the adults were easily twice Thor's height and then some, but seemed slender and agile rather than bulky. They were humanoid and had proper proportions, everything on them was just bigger than usual. Twice as big. These were no trolls, no lumbering beasts with more brawn than brain.

“Jotuns,” Thor boomed as if he owned the land and had every right to act as judge over them, “what was the meaning behind sending scouts into Asgard?”

Loki winced at the aggressiveness.

The Frost Giants snarled at them in their own language, hissing heated words among themselves. “We will settle this before the King,” one of the adults said at long last. A clever tactic, and one that would escalate matters above their heads. Taking a stand then and there would land blame on their own heads, but leaving it up to a monarch would make everything a political matter.

Being more reasonable than he normally was, Thor nodded his agreement. Miracles still happened, it seemed. “Lead the way to this King of yours,” Thor ordered.

Whatever the response was it sounded more like a curse than assent, but the giants irritably waved at them to follow when the group started walking. This was perilous, because if it had not been a trap before it might very well evolve into one.

“This is some birthday celebration,” Loki said under his breath.

Thor grinned and patted his shoulder. “I thought you enjoyed winter?” he jested.

Loki glared at his brother. “Not enough to die in a snowdrift.”

They followed the Frost Giants across the snow and ice covered tundra to a settlement, or at least the vast ruins of one, the civilians who were out and about were giving the two Aesir princes curious glances. The older giants looked furious, while the young looked nervous or outright scared. They might be the first Aesir these people had seen since the war, Loki realized. The war where Odin had probably humiliated Jotunheim.

They were horribly outnumbered before, but now they would be lucky to escape alive if things turned sour. All he had on him was a few daggers, and while they were wickedly sharp they would help little. At best he could take one of the Jotuns out, but there was no way he could outrun one or kill more of them and survive.

He had not been expecting this when they skipped their duties that day, supposedly to celebrate his birthday. Thor had not either, but he never went anywhere without his hammer. Loki was half convinced the oaf bathed with it. If he bathed at all. He sure did not seem partial to soap... or perhaps he had noticed Loki sneaking color pigments into them. Unlikely, but possible. More likely was that Thor like most Aesir only bathed when he saw dirt, not when he smelled it.

Loki was surprised to find it was not as cold as he had expected in Jotunheim, though his skin had a more blueish hue in the dim light and he wished for his winter boots so that he could get better traction. The icy ground was slippery, but he soon figured out how to find the best path by watching the giants avoid stepping on certain patches.

Thor had a red flush from the cold and shivered slightly, much more affected by the cold than Loki was. He did not think much of this difference. It had always been like this. Thor thrived in summer, Loki in winter. They were like polar opposites. Besides, being Aesir the climate on Jotunheim would not harm either of them too much as long as they did not stay for an extended period of time. They would just be miserable and stiff.

When they got closer to a towering structure Thor took off with his hammer, leaving Loki alone. He wanted to curse, but refrained. It would make it look like the impulsive thing it was, and if they were to get out alive Thor needed to appear competent.

They walked up a steep hill, and when Loki slipped he found himself gently picked up by one of the older giants. They chattered rather excitedly about something in their own language, but as Loki did not understand a word they said he had no clue what it was about. One member of the group took off right after.

To Loki's relief he was put down just as gently on the top of the hill. He decided the smart thing to do was to be friendly and thanked the giant who just grunted gruffly at him. The giants were much friendlier than he had expected even though they were obviously displeased with the general situation. The stories of bloodthirsty monsters told during his childhood seemed stupid now.

He slid down the first part of the hill more than he walked, but his balance kept him from falling. The two Jotuns who had been in Asgard looked at him funny.

“You are not the only ones who are not adults yet, you know,” Loki huffed with a smirk and walked in the snow beside the path to keep from falling on his face.

“Is this a joke to you?” one of the older giants asked, a little too confrontational to be friendly.

“Skidding on ice? Yes. Trespassing? No.”

They started talking in their own language again, Loki trying to pick up familiar words. He wondered why the Allspeak did nothing to translate, but shrugged it off. Not every language translated well. He heard them make noises that seemed to indicate to the speaker that they were listening. Elves were much the same, he had learned, but unlike the elves the giants used a lot of hand motions as they spoke.

Once they were all in front of what was obviously a King on his throne the Frost Giants quickly started arguing with him in their language. Loki still did not understand a word, but he could tell by their tones and mannerisms that the Frost Giants were not big on politeness. There was no bowing, no enforced turns, more like a bunch of children in front of a parent.

He went to Thor, who the King seemingly had ignored so far, and stood by his side. There was a guard perhaps four long strides away, likely one for a giant, who kept a curious eye on them. His brother looked like he was itching to fight, and more than a little miffed at not being given attention.

“Please stay calm, brother. Father will not easily forgive us if we start a war with Jotunheim,” Loki urged Thor even as they both strained to listen to what was said. “You know finances are strained. He will be even less pleased if he has to bury us before riding out.”

Thor nodded sharply.

Loki looked at the ruins in which they stood, but stopped because the more he looked the more guards he saw.

“Ah, the sons of Odin,” the King said using the Allspeak, he tapped his clawed fingers against the armrests with a cruel look in his eyes. Or perhaps simply annoyed, Loki had to remind himself that the red eyes were a genetic trait of the species and not an indication of any character traits. “What brings the two Aesir princes to our realm?”

“Why did you send your people into Asgard?” Thor asked, voice steady but calm. Loki had wished for something less confrontational to start off with, but Thor was Thor. Pleasantries, why did no one observe them?

“I did no such thing,” the King said with a scoff. He pointed to the two who had been to Asgard. “These two are children, Aesir, curiosity gets them into trouble. I am sure it is something you are intimately familiar with yourself, being a child still.”

“Then you have no problem with sealing the portal,” Loki quickly cut in before Thor could bristle at being called a child and get them killed. His tone of voice was more respectful than Thor's but he stepped a little closer to the throne, trying to mimic a more polite version of the Jotuns behavior. “We will see it sealed off from our end as well. I would like to think the stories told in Asgard paint a false picture and you do not in fact treat your young so horribly that they need to run away.”

“Children are _precious_ ,” the Jotun King snarled viciously. Loki forced himself to step closer still and interrupt any further words instead of listening to his instincts. When anyone combined claws and sharp teeth with a hot temper, Loki preferred to run. “Then you will not risk Asgard's guards killing them for being curious. Seal the portal. It is the easiest way to prevent trouble for both of us.”

Loki felt relief wash over him when no one attacked him, even though his behavior would have had him beheaded in Asgard. A few guards had closed in on him. He could practically feel the anger roll off the large giants in waves. Looking the foreign King in the eyes, Loki knew he would agree even if he seemed to have an indifferent mask in place.

He hoped no one could tell how scared he was. This was not Alfheim or Midgard, this was not a people known to wait as long as possible before attacking. Mortals preferred to talk, elves to walk away from conflicts. Frost Giants were rumored to kill first and ask no questions.

Before the Jotun King could answer, Asgard's golden warriors appeared behind them, led by Odin. Loki should have felt more relieved than he did. Mostly it annoyed him that Odin could not have chosen to come later. Or sooner, for that matter. They were close enough to solving the matter on their own that their father's interference would just hinder their progress.

Thor held his hand up. “It is under control, father.”

Odin turned to the Jotun King. “I may have fallen for your doppelganger tricks before, Helblindi, but you will not fool me again. Where is your father?”

“I am acting in his stead. You forget, Allfather, which day it is and what parents here are busy with,” Helblindi said ominously. Fingers once again irritably tapping the cold stone of the throne. And things had been going so well.

“I am well aware, which is why we did not appreciate -”

“Father,” Loki urged, cutting Odin off and hoping he would not be slapped. “They were just _children_. As big as us, sure, but we barely reach the chest of an adult Jotun.”

“Do not be fooled so easily by size, Loki, Jotuns come in many sizes,” Odin chided. “And do not interrupt me again.”

“You son is correct,” Helblindi rumbled, “these two are mere children. The treaty you have with my father gives you the right to slay them all the same. We know you have done so in the past. We would not be surprised if you did so again, but do it on _our land_ and we will retaliate. You have no authority here, son of Bor.”

“Father,” Loki said softly in shock when Odin did not immediately dismiss the idea of killing two children. Or refute the claim of killing other children. He could see on the faces of the increasingly nervous Jotun youths that they believed his father to be capable of executing them. They were sentient, they were intelligent enough to learn, why would his father cut them down like disobedient cattle? “If we cannot show mercy then what sets us apart from -”

“Silence!” Odin snapped at him.

Loki jerked back a little at the vehemence, suddenly glad to be closer to the Jotun King than to his father.

“I say we go with Loki's suggestion,” Thor calmly told Odin, walking closer to their father as he spoke. His hands idly played with Mjolnir. “Seal the portal in both realms. There was no harm done and they likely did not know where it would lead them. It could with luck had been Niflheim, which ought to suit them better than Asgard...”

Loki rolled his eyes at the joke. Clearly they were warmblooded, their breaths misted in the cold air. Niflheim would prove too cold even for them, Loki guessed. Though, he was curious about just how much cold they could survive.

Odin, for once, seemed to consider something Loki had brought forth. Probably only because Thor agreed, Loki mused with a touch of bitterness. Why did he always have to fight so much harder than Thor for recognition?

“You would pass up a chance to kill Jotun children, Odin, bastard son of Bestla?” a new voice asked from right behind Loki. He spun around to see a Frost Giant towering over him who looked related by blood to the one on the throne. Older, but not elderly by the look of it.

“The men got carried away, you know this,” Odin said in a terse voice, “and in any case it is history now.”

“Going into a holy temple and killing our children, it is most certainly history, and something we mourn each year,” Laufey, for it had to be the infamous Laufey he had heard stories about, said bitterly.

Loki wanted to say he was sorry for their loss, but it would matter little if his own father was responsible. The adult Jotuns all looked so miserable beneath their anger it made him a bit sad. He was still very close to where Laufey stood, much closer than he preferred, but he did not want to appear weak or frightened. Not here. Not in Asgard either, but certainly not here. They'd eat him alive. Literally.

Drawing attention to himself seemed dumb. No one would reach him in time if the Jotuns attacked.

“My oldest son Helblindi is acting as King until The Mourning passes,” Laufey said with finality. “He _will_ rule. I would sooner eat your heart than be reasonable today. Though that hardly differs from most days, truthfully.”

Loki would have been more scared if Laufey had not all but ignored him completely. He was not counting on it to last. His luck was never that good.

“Jotunheim will do as proposed. The portal will be sealed from our end,” Helblindi said in a bored tone. “The sorcerer prince,” he said looking curiously in Loki's direction, “will stay and witness it, as you would never trust our word alone. I assume the Bifrost can transport him back once we are done.”

“Will you be alright in the cold, Loki?” Thor asked Loki quietly, but he did not move closer. “I would not leave you here alone with these savages.”

“What choice do we have? Better me than you. They have done us no harm yet and I can use my magic to keep warm,” Loki assured. He had not yet, there was no need. If anything he rather enjoyed the chill. No need to tell Thor that, he would be teased until the end of his days. “Go home with father, Thor. You are soon as blue as they are.”

One of the warriors behind Odin separated from the main force, and Loki saw that it had been Sif, hidden behind the taller men. She removed her cloak from her shoulders and quickly rolled it up so that she could throw it to Loki. Thor beamed a smile at Sif and Loki gave her a small nod as thanks.

“Expect him back in one night from now, two at most,” Helblindi told Odin.

“We will be watching,” Odin warned before the Bifrost took the Aesir away. Leaving Loki with an open-air courtroom full of Jotuns. Apparently he had a mission to accomplish and as usual he had nothing but his own wits to aid him.

He donned the cloak. If he got back alive from Jotunheim he would make an effort to be nicer to Sif.

“Why so long to seal a portal?” Loki asked once the multicolored shimmer from the Bifrost was gone. He was not sure he was safe despite his assurances to his brother. He hated being left to his own devices so often. It was not like Thor was ever exiled to Alfheim for decades.

“We do not work unless it is critical today,” Laufey answered solemnly, red eyes almost piercing enough to look into Loki's very soul. “ _Loki_ , was that what your brother called you?”

“Besides,” Helblindi added quickly, “we rarely receive visits from other realms. Perhaps we could entertain you with our version of the events you have surely been told about in great exaggeration in Asgard.”

Loki smiled politely. “I have no doubt your account would differ, but I would be more entertained to learn about your customs and traditions. There is no shortage of information on how to wage war, maim enemies or end the world in my father's library, but no one seems to have bothered with learning much else.”

Helblindi grunted. “That would take more than two days. Especially if my father gets started on the good old days.”

Laufey shot his son a warning glare, but Helblindi did not seem to worry about it. “The sky darkens,” Laufey said with a curious glint in his red eyes, “come with us to The Mourning Ceremony. It will begin soon.”

Loki was wary of Laufey, but he followed when the Frost Giant King started walking. A small number of adult giants, including Helblindi, joined them.

“Two hundred and three,” Laufey said when they had walked for a length of time. The longer legs of the giants meant that Loki had to walk fast to keep up, but thankfully they walked on snow rather than an icy road. “That is how many children we lost. Asgard murdered them and stole the Casket. The artifact we could have forgiven. We are not as dependent on artifacts as many other races.”

“It was every child too young to fight,” another of the Frost Giants said surly. “Some bodies were never found.”

Laufey was quiet for a long while, a dark look on his face. “It was after we surrendered. After the Casket was taken from us. Many were too wounded to keep fighting.”

Loki kept quiet and kept his eyes on the ground. He was afraid of what they were planning on doing to him. They had their nemesis' son at their mercy, not four hundred years after the war had ended. No time at all for most races. Loki wanted to shout for Heimdall, but he was not sure the gatekeeper would care. He would never be able to fight his way out, and he had a feeling nothing he could say would matter overly much to grieving parents.

If they wanted to hurt him, they surely would and he would not be able to stop them.

“Odin did nothing to stop it,” Laufey went on. “Asgard's main army had left Jotunheim. Only a few remained to negotiate the peace treaty.”

“So it was not in the heat of battle?” Loki could not help but blurt out. Laufey was implying that Asgard had killed hundreds of children in cold blood and it hurt Loki's head more than his heart. That was not the Asgard he knew. It felt alien to him that any Aesir would do such a thing. They might not value children the way the elves did, but to outright murder defenseless children held no glory or honor. It was not their way.

“No,” Laufey growled. He was looking ahead, thankfully, and not focusing his anger on Loki.

“Did you lose a child?” Loki guessed in a quiet voice.

“Several. I still have my bastards, like Helblindi. He was already an adult by then. Since he is not from my wife he would have no claim on the throne going by the old ways.”

“The humans tend to vote for their leaders nowadays,” Loki offered up. “I suppose that has some merit.”

“Says the second son,” Laufey smirked viciously, all teeth and malice.

“Says the son with more brains than brawn,” Loki countered.

“Not brain enough to not wander into our land dressed for summer. This is the height of our winter, tonight will be colder than any Aesir have ever survived. Have you lost feeling in your tiny fingers and toes yet? You are not exactly dressed for Jotunheim temperatures, little Loki.”

“Says the barbarian who is only dressed in a loincloth,” Loki huffed before he could shut himself up. His mouth would surely be the death of him. His epitaph would read: 'Here lies Loki, who was unable to keep his mouth shut in hostile territory.'

“My son may be acting as King today, but do not forget who you are mouthing off to,” Laufey warned, but seemed less annoyed than what could be expected.

“I do not like being called little, even if it is appropriate here, where I am sure even the infants are larger than me.”

“That is not true. Our children tend to start small and grow slowly,” Helblindi said, perhaps to keep peace. “We do not stop growing in our teens like humans and Aesir. It takes longer for us to become adults since the brain grows along with the body.”

“Unless we are in very warm climates,” another adult added. “When I was young I had a cousin who grew up in a Muspelheim's central parts. He was tiny and would not grow even when he was brought back.”

“But you can survive in warmer places?” Loki asked.

“Yes, but we evolved in the cold. It will not harm an adult, but it will be uncomfortable.”

“So using the Casket of Eternal Winters to freeze Midgard was not fully necessary.”

“Freeze Midgard?” Laufey smirked, his voice dripped with sarcasm. “New one. I have only heard I planned to eat the tiny mortals. That is beyond the capabilities of it, in case you are interested. The Casket's main purpose is not to make ice. We were not interested in the mortal realm. Jotunheim is littered with rifts, like the portal you came through today. Yggdrasil likes connecting us to the other realms. The humans were raiding the lands through one such rift. We went to their realm to teach them a lesson, along with slaying a few elves and dwarfs who caused us grief.”

“Suppose I believe your word, which I am not sure I do, why would Odin send his army after you?” Loki asked. “You make it sound like a territorial dispute.”

“Your grandfather defeated the Dark Elves, which was a huge thing back in the day. Odin was eager to be just as victorious. Just like Thor is causing trouble all over the nine realms in a vain search of glory. Odin conquered Alfheim and Vanaheim, it got to his head.”

“I will not argue against what you said about Thor,” Loki admitted with a grin to Laufey's silent amusement. There was a snicker heard from one of the other adult giants. Despite wanting to argue about everything else, Loki kept quiet. He would need talk to Odin, or more likely Frigga, when he returned just to be sure Laufey was tricking him.

They had reached the place of their ceremony, whatever that entailed. Hopefully not tearing him into tiny shreds and eating his flesh. Loki was sure they had indeed arrived at the right location because there were lights everywhere and every other Jotun present held a glowing orb. He assumed they were made of ice and made to glow with magic. He quickly counted the lights and come up with two hundred and thirty. Perhaps Laufey had been wrong earlier, but the numbers were close enough that he thought he knew what this was about.

The giants were standing in a rough circle with a small open space in the middle. Laufey made his way to the center, urging Loki along with sharp movements. Loki worried again he would have his throat slit, likely to appease the mourning parents. That would make a grand show.

He saw Helblindi stand off to the side, but there were too many giants assembled for him to keep track accurately.

As Laufey reached the center everything quieted and no noise was heard at all.

“We have a visitor this year,” Laufey said quietly, but the wind was still for the moment and his voice carried far in the clear night. Dusk had been there and gone in a blink while they walked. The night was dark, and colder than the day by far. “Two of ours ventured into Asgard. Odin's sons chased after them,” Laufey continued.

“So we need two more lights,” one of the nearby giants said while glaring accusingly at Loki.

“Not if they symbolize the dead,” Loki said. “No one died. We will seal the portal on both ends.”

The Frost Giant that had spoken before cocked its head. “Odin kills all who enter Asgard. Children or not.”

Loki felt his eyes go wider even though he tried hard to keep a neutral face. Perhaps the number of lights was correct then.

He had never wanted to know this. He had never wanted to hear of such things.

“Not today,” Laufey said in a louder voice than before. A gentle hand landed on Loki's head. “So treat our guest nicely, now. He is much too skinny to eat anyway.”

The Frost Giants grew pensive and relieved. Loki saw it on their faces. Some smiled slightly for a brief moment, but most of them just looked grim and sullen.

Laufey removed his hand from Loki's head in a movement that was almost a caress and waved towards the gathered giants with both hands. “Come forth, one at a time, and place the soul light on the temple ground. The temple might be no more, but a holy place is still holy no matter what is on top of it.”

It reminded Loki slightly of Asgard's funeral ceremonies, how they allowed their light orbs to float to the sky as the dead were burned on boats symbolically being sent off to Valhalla. Except the Jotuns placed theirs on the snow covered ground in an almost perfect circle around Laufey. As an orb was gently placed on the ground a name was spoken. Asgard only grieved once. Jotunheim did this every year, and he could not help but wonder when they would stop. If they stopped. Perhaps the wound was too deep to ever fully heal.

It took a long time before all the orbs were placed. Laufey urged Loki to stay by his side, inside the circle of lights, with patient gestures. Not that he could have gone anywhere without causing a disruption of major proportions. It was eerie to be allowed there, but in the dim light it was also oddly beautiful. Loki only spooked once, when his own name was said by Helblindi. He knew his father had a mixed heritage, so perhaps it was not so odd that he had a Jotun name. Even so, it gave him mixed feelings to have the same name as someone dead, someone killed by Asgard if Laufey was to be believed. He wondered who the dead Loki had been to Helblindi.

Once they were done, with all the light orbs lighting up the ground like lanterns and casting long ominous shadows all around the area, Laufey cast a spell. The snow beneath their feet swirled away as if it had just fallen instead of being tightly packed after bearing the weight of a gathering of giants, the flakes mixed with pale green sparkles in a very visual show. For a few seconds Loki could only see glittering white and green. Underneath the snow the thick ice was clear as drinking water. Embedded inside the ice were bodies. Dead children. Frozen and looking like they had the moment the had died. Loki heard what he assumed to be parents cry. He could only stare down in a fascinated kind of horror. He had taken lives, he had killed many warriors over the years, but it disturbed him to see the bodies of the dead children even if they were Jotuns. There were older children clutching toddlers in an attempt to protect them with their own bodies. If he ignored the wounds it almost looked like they had laid down to sleep.

Laufey cast another spell, and this time the lights all died at once, the orbs dissolving into fine shimmering mist that rose to the dark sky. It felt somehow appropriate.

Loki was glad he could no longer see the children, but he knew they were there and that was enough to unsettle him. It made standing on the ice feel like a sacrilege. He could feel the ambience unusually clear, the sadness and the anger and the loss. He almost wanted to cry himself, unshed tears burned his eyes and made his throat feel tight, but he managed to keep it at bay. It was sad, but these were strangers.

Thankfully everyone was leaving. Laufey stayed standing in his spot, so Loki took the cue and stayed still as well while the Jotuns left in groups or alone. The cold had seeped into him by now, almost as if he was submerged in cold water. It felt nice. Nothing like how Thor described cold temperatures. When the last giant left Laufey finally moved, but not far. He lit a light with magic that hovered a little over the ice. The green color seemed too vibrant for a frozen realm.

“These are mine, the youngest was never found, but the rest are here,” Laufey said in a quiet voice, a large clawed hand indicating the bodies of a group of children. “You wanted to know our culture, princeling. Know this, we never kill inside a temple. No matter what our enemies pray to, if they hide in a temple they are safe.”

Loki dutifully looked at the dead siblings for as long as he could stomach. One of the girls had been raped. It was still easy to see, just as he could see a younger sibling curled up to her side as if it was seeking warmth.

“I am starting to see a merit to burning the dead,” Loki muttered. “When someone dies on Asgard we make a point to remember them as they were when they lived.”

“We rarely use fire,” Laufey said. “It is not our element and we have little need of it. Besides, this is not a normal funeral.”

“You use magic. What does element matter to magic?”

Laufey did not comment. He put the light out with a flick of a hand, the gesture morphing into a wave for Loki to follow him. Once they were away from the temple ground he heard a whooshing sound and turned his head to see snow settle over the ice again.

It was a showy display, much like the visual ones from before, but Loki saw how effortlessly Laufey wielded his magic and he knew it was not showy to make up for a lack of skill.

Loki was led into a cave system running underneath the structures above ground. It was considerably warmer below, but warmer on Jotunheim was still cold. All such things are by their nature relative. The night air outside was getting cold enough that even the giants seemed to find it slightly unpleasant, and Loki was glad to be away from the increasingly harsh chill.

The tunnel widened into a larger hall with many tunnels connecting to it. The Frost Giants were clearly nocturnal, judging by the increase in activity around them.

Laufey went up to his son and said something in their language. The flow and cadence was not as harsh as Loki had expected before setting foot on the realm. Helblindi nodded along while he gave both Laufey and Loki a drink in mugs made of bone, warm tea if Loki was not wrong. Holding the mug warmed his hands some. He smiled his thanks to the giant who seemed mostly uninterested in him. It was steaming, but did not feel warm enough to be at the boiling point. He wondered if relatively speaking that temperature was hot to a Jotun. It sure felt hot against his cold fingers.

“Honestly father, letting an Aesir walk outside in the night? What if we have to give his corpse back to Odin? You will doom us all,” Helblindi said with a slight tease in his voice and a light shove to Laufey's shoulder. He did not sound worried in the slightest. Perhaps he simply did not care. Loki realized that the Allspeak picked his words up, whereas other times it did not. Perhaps there was more than one language spoken on Jotunheim.

“A part of me thinks that would only be _fair_ ,” Laufey grumbled with a cruel smirk towards Loki. He sipped the drink.

“A part of me wonders if Jotunheim could survive the retribution,” Loki said confidently. His assessment of Laufey's character made him worry a little less about his safety. The Jotun King seemed too intelligent to cause an incident and not first consider the consequences of it. No, Laufey was just moody and Loki was the son of his nemesis, making him an ideal target to snipe at. Perhaps it would have been different on another day, under different circumstances.

If Asgard's tales had held much truth he would have been killed and torn to pieces already. Clearly the giants were not so different from Aesir. Loki sipped his own tea. It was lukewarm, but had some type of spice in it that warmed. A bit like ginger. He wasn't sure he could have managed boiling hot water in the cold.

“You know, I always wondered who the Queen slept with in your father's absence. There was one child, Thor, when the war started. Then she miraculously has two and you look _nothing_ like Odin.” Laufey waved an over-sized finger in front of Loki's face to indicate his bone structure. While he never made contact Loki still felt a tingling as his magic reacted to the proximity. “Wrong colors too.”

“My mother did no such thing. While the Allfather has not seen fit to tell me anything, she said he brought me home with him. Supposedly I was an orphan with no family. I guess I was a soldier's brat. We do not speak of it and while Thor will always be the favorite it is not like they treat me poorly. What is a royal court without a few scandals, anyway?”

“Dull,” Helblindi complained, but there was a glimmer of something Loki could not place in his eyes, “incredibly dull.”

“Want to borrow Thor?” Loki joked. He did not appreciate the constant insults, but he decided he could withstand it for the short duration of his stay. It seemed to be all bark and, so far, no bite. Perhaps giants were more open and honest as a people. “He could come once in a while and have a party.”

The face Helblindi made said a lot about what reputation Thor had around the realms. Loki laughed, because he saw the same face on his mother every time Thor mentioned throwing a party.

“Hm. Little Loki did not turn out half bad despite being raised by Odin. Helblindi, you begged for peace so make sure you keep it. I have better things to do than babysit,” Laufey said before he left them.

“Well well,” Helblindi said quietly once his father was out of earshot. “That is interesting.”

“How so?”

“Father does not like Asgardians, I would even go so far as to say he loathes the entire species. Except you, apparently. Consider yourself lucky.”

“Thor will not be pleased to hear there are people who prefer me over him,” Loki half-joked. It was not that Thor wanted him unhappy, it was that Thor needed attention more than most people needed air to breathe.

“Let him suffer. Without setbacks children do not learn.”

“You are most wise for someone bearing the name All Blind.”

“My second mother is terrible at names. Then again, I used to just be called _Laufey's boy_ , so this is in all honesty some improvement.”

“Your _second_ mother?” Loki asked. He did not understand why anyone would need two. “Your father has two wives?”

“No. Father's only wife, she gave me this name. She is a good parent even though I was an adult already when they married. I had expected her to reject me. The one who birthed me dumped me as soon as I was weaned, father was looking at me as if I was a beast for two days before he came around a little. I was jealous when I got siblings because clearly he had already made all parenting mistakes with me.”

“Oh, I see what you meant. You seem close, you and Laufey,” Loki observed. He was not jealous of people who had seemingly effortless relationships with their fathers. Especially not when both parties seemed to respect each other. No, Loki was not jealous at all...

“We are. Now. I ran away several times a year when I was younger to live with the hunters in the south. They always talked me into going back when a merchant was headed for the capital.”

“All I have ever heard about Jotuns is that you are monsters; mindless and evil and bloodthirsty. It is odd being here, and finding you all mostly civil. I thought it would be colder as well.”

Helblindi chuckled. “One thing I learned while father allows me to play King for a day is that you have to consider why people say what they do. We were at war with Asgard, of course Asgard will tell you how terrible we are. I am sure it has nothing on the stories we tell the young ones, anyway.”

“I have only ever seen Odin as a benevolent King. Not perfect, but never cruel.” Loki wanted to think positive things about his father. Even if they did not always agree, family was important, and even if he was adopted he had only ever known Odin and Frigga as his parents. He did not want to think of either of them as ruthless.

“War is different. I fought against Asgard's army alongside my father and second mother. You are not the same person you are otherwise. All you think about is how to destroy and hurt,” Helblindi said before Loki could offer up some kind of apology for what his people had done. It was just as well.

“Well, I think you will make a good King.” Loki finished the last of his tea and started fiddling with the mug. A Jotun who had been standing unobtrusively to the side reached out a hand for it. Loki handed it over. He was too used to people being around at all hours to take much note of servants, but the Jotun did not act like a servant. Loki supposed they were different here, and perhaps did not have servants at all.

“Thank you, but if it means losing my father I would rather things stay as they are,” Helblindi said.

Loki nodded. “Losing your family to gain a responsibility that heavy does not seem very enviable, does it?”

“If it does, you have no business ruling. Would you like to meet some alive children?” Helblindi asked. “I am sure father has scared you enough... for now.”

“Yes,” Loki said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.

It was not hard to find children. They just had to walk a little further into the cave for them to get to clusters of Jotuns. The older children got excited to see Helblindi, babbling in their native tongue and screaming for their friends. Some of them were so small compared to the adults that Loki silently wondered how they were not crushed by accident. Except they were not pushed or shoved. The more he watched them the more he noticed that the bigger ones were careful not to jostle the smallest. Even careful not to jostle him.

On Asgard they would have been bullied. Loki knew that because he was often sneered at as a child for being small. Thor certainly had more giant's blood in him than Loki did.

Most of the children feared Loki, that much was obvious. They did not dare get too close, even though Helblindi seemed to be telling them he was friendly and there was a guard standing close by. That might have been just as well, Loki could see a few nervous parents hovering nearby.

The ones who did dare get close to him were very careful compared to how they acted to each other. He saw smaller ones clinging to bigger children and being lifted up so they could see better. Helblindi talked to them all the while, answered questions they asked.

One of the bravest got close enough that Loki could feel its breath when it sniffed him. It reported something back to its companions who all exclaimed something that sounded like disbelief.

“She is saying you do not stink like an Aesir,” Helblindi explained when Loki looked to him for an explanation. The child could have been either gender as far as Loki could see, to him they were an anonymous mass of blueish gray beings in the dim light of the cave.

“Some of us do wash,” Loki snorted.

The girl was still close and reached out to touch his skin, she moved slow, obviously trying very hard not to startle or scare him. She continued when he did nothing to reprimand her, gently examining his hair and clothes. Her touch was feather light and more cool than cold. She curiously poked his hand when she noticed his nails.

She grinned, showing off her sharp white teeth, and then walked off. The adults took this as their cue to draw the children away. They looked at Loki as if they expected him to start killing any second, like he was a wild beast better kept someplace else.

Helblindi and Loki walked on, leaving the large masses behind and following a tunnel. Guards trailed behind, sometimes mumbling words to Helblindi. The cave system was extensive. Loki marveled at the mix between natural structures and clearly manufactured areas. There were plants too, or perhaps a type of fungi, that had a jelly-like consistency and a misty white color. They grew on the walls and in smaller rooms which seemed dedicated to them alone.

“What are the white plants?” Loki asked while they walked around aimlessly. Or, he assumed it was aimlessly. Helblindi might be leading him somewhere and not just walking around to waste time. He decided not to ask, it was pleasant enough. If he was being led to a dungeon he would rather not know.

“It is a native species. They are edible and they clean the air, so we do our best to make them thrive. Somewhat bland to eat, but if needs must we can,” Helblindi said.

This time while he spoke Loki made sure to make little humming noises and nod to show he was listening, trying to fall into his habits from Alfheim. “Did you always live in caves?” Loki asked. The pictures he had seen of Jotunheim showed only above ground dwellings and structures.

“Not always. We evolved in caves further south. During the tide they were flooded, I am told. We did not rebuild on the surface after the war. We went underground, back to our roots. Away from prying eyes. Cowering like scared children, some claimed.”

“I hope you do not mind my curiosity, it is just that it is the first time I am here. I rather like seeing new things.”

“You would notice if I minded.” After a bit of thought he added, “same with my father. He is a stubborn and proud man, if he was cross with you we would be gathering the pieces to put in a box by now. He is just teasing. It is a good thing to treat it as such.”

Loki shrugged, trying for nonchalance, but a smile crept over his lips anyway. Perhaps he might just make it out alive.

There were carvings on the walls which Helblindi kept tracing, runes Loki had not seen before. He did not ask about them.

They kept walking for a long time, sometimes climbing up cliff walls to get to another area.

“If I came back, would I be welcome?” Loki asked. He honestly hoped so. Jotunheim was fascinating, and he would like to get to know the Jotuns better.

“If you came alone, yes,” Laufey said from above them, his voice echoing slightly in the mostly bare chamber. “And preferably not on official business.”

Loki looked up, a little surprised to see a narrow walkway above. When he had gone through military training he had always been scolded for forgetting to look up. It was not ingrained in his body, he naturally kept a better eye on things behind him.

“We are here now,” Laufey said with a wave of his hand. “The portal is above us. There is an opening to the surface just a ways east of here.”

Loki felt the area with his magic and found that Laufey was correct. The cave must be massive to stretch over so much space.

“The builders will come shortly then?” Helblindi asked.

Laufey shook his head. “Not until the sun rises. We will eat first, the _little_ princeling surely must be hungry by now. One can not survive on tea alone.”

Loki huffed, not as irritated as he thought he should be. “I am not so spoiled that I cannot go a day without food.”

Laufey jumped down to where Loki stood. “Are you not curious, little morsel, if we eat Aesir? Perhaps I will cook your tiny bones for being insolent?” he mocked, showing too many sharp teeth as he spoke. “Come. Eat. There is no point in being hungry when one does not have to. We even have children's bowls for the _tiny_ little princeling.”

Laufey started walking, and when Loki did nothing to follow Helblindi gave him a light shove. They walked to a nearby room where an assortment of food was laid out on a smooth stone table. He watched how the giants acted and then followed suit, cleaning his hands first, then picking up a smooth wooden bowl and filling it with various things. They poured warm water over it last, creating a kind of gruel or soup. There was no cutlery, nor any drinks, but it was not by far the weirdest meal Loki had tried.

They sat on the floor with crossed legs, Loki herded to sit between Laufey and Helblindi. More giants joined them, and for the entire meal they all kept mostly silent. It seemed you did not speak until your bowl was empty.

It was oddly liberating to eat with just his hands and by tipping the bowl. The giants ate very neatly, but with none of the stiff etiquette Asgard's court often demanded. Asgard was the opposite, the more you talked while you ate the better. Preferably people talked loudly about things they had done, battles and glory, while others listened or cheered. Asgard was rarely this silent. For all that he noticed the difference he did not miss Asgard's boisterous dinners.

Loki wondered where the Queen was. All accounts he had read told that she had survived the war, and Helblindi had made it seem as if she was still around. Perhaps she merely wanted to mourn alone.

“I had forgotten how tiny they are,” the largest giant in the room muttered with a nod to Loki. He looked old, with old battle scars on his face and a massive muscular frame. He looked like he could crush boulders with his teeth. Loki assumed he belonged to the army.

Laufey chuckled, though Frost Giant chuckling was more of a rumbling sound. “Careful, Hailstrum, he does not like being called little.”

“You should tell him it is not an insult, as long as it is about a child,” Helblindi mumbled. He had finished his bowl off quickly and was now flipping it in the air in a display of boredom. “Small children survive easier. They need less food and sometimes they grow bigger than their siblings. Being little is no insult for a child.”

“I am not a child,” Loki pointed out, though it was only partially true.

“Not far from,” Laufey grinned. “You are not an adult yet, and nowhere near as tall as your impatient brother. Want dessert?”

Considering the rumbling laugh that spread among the giants, Loki figured that was a trick question. “Do I?” he asked suspiciously. His mother would be appalled to hear he accepted food so readily from people who for all intents and purposes were not on friendly terms with Asgard's royal court. He supposed he should be more careful, but really, he doubted the giants would be subtle enough to use poison. Not to mention, the food helped warm him a little.

Laufey held a bug in front of his face. Like damned near everything else on the realm it was big, but he could tell it was at least dead and cooked somehow. “Open up.”

Helblindi was suddenly holding a bigger bowl full of the things.

It was not that eating bugs was a novel idea to him, it was that they never did on Asgard. He knew other realms used all kinds of insects in their cooking. And really, the food had not made him sick so far. Gingerly, as if it might bite, he took the bug and ate it.

“Not bad,” he admitted.

It was sweet, a bit like rich honey and baked apples, and it was not too hard to chew. He idly wondered why he could eat the same food as the giants, who were so different in many aspects from Aesir, but brushed the thought aside. As far as he knew they were able to interbreed, surely the differences were not that great apart from the overall size. And skin color, granted.

“See, that was not so bad,” Laufey said as if talking to a reluctant child.

“Loki is not an Aesir name,” one of the gathered giants said thoughtfully. He sat next to Hailstrum and in comparison he looked rather small, but compared to Loki he was huge. Loki thought he had seen him before, but he had seen too many giants in too short a time frame to place the face correctly. They all looked so similar it was hard to keep them apart.

Loki shrugged. “I have truthfully never really thought much about it.”

“Not until you heard it earlier, no? It is not common here, but you could find a few. Especially around the old capital. But,” Laufey said cheerfully, “what is in a name, anyway?”

Helblindi gave Loki a handful of bugs and passed the bowl to another giant. Apparently, something was in his name, or Laufey would not have brought it up.

“Do we toss the princess through the portal to see if the Aesir hold their word?” Hailstrum asked, much to the amusement of the other giants.

Loki put on his best superior grin and silently cast a spell to make the mountain of a Jotun hover above ground. “Perhaps the princess will toss you in to test it,” Loki said sweetly. “I am sure the Einherjar will be very forgiving.”

“You will owe me a general,” Laufey said.

Loki nonchalantly popped a bug into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “I suppose we could round up a few trolls for you. Two of them stand on each others shoulders they will be just as big and twice as clever.”

He ended the spell and gently put the big giant down.

Helblindi scratched his chin. “Trolls must be much bigger on Asgard.”

Loki tried to keep from laughing, but failed.

Hailstrum glared briefly but stayed where he was and seemed more interested in dessert anyway. Giants, it seemed, were not easily offended. That, or they were used to Laufey's fickle moods.

Hands were washed, used bowls placed in a basket, and all of them moved to another room, which had a few more comforts.

Laufey pulled a book from seemingly thin air and settled down to read. Helblindi silently urged Loki to sit down by tugging at his clothes.

A young giant came in from outside, judging by the snow on him, loudly complaining. There was a chuckle from all the giants in the room, and Hailstrum surprised Loki by wrapping a fur around the clearly cold giant.

“You get cold?”

“I see your education has certain gaps,” Laufey muttered.

“It just seems odd that Frost Giants should get frostbite.”

There was a collective groan around the room.

“What?”

“Go fuck a troll,” the newcomer said.

“That would be the prettiest thing you have on this realm,” Loki shot back.

His mouth would definitely be the death of him.

Helblindi flicked his ear. “Is it past your bedtime? Be nice or I will go find the Queen and have her tuck you in with the children in the temple.”

Loki rubbed his ear.

“Your mother would never sully holy ground like that,” Laufey tutted. “Now, the little princeling is going to behave, or he will find himself in trouble.”

Laufey then read out loud from the book he was holding. 

 

 


	2. Odin And Frigga

Once he was back in Asgard Loki went to confirm that the portal had indeed been sealed off and then went straight back to Jotunheim to relay the information. He could have sent a messenger, but he had gotten along with the Frost Giants and did not want to risk anything going sour because some nobleman's snotty kid could not keep a polite tone. Besides, the nobles had always expressed a certain fear of being sent with messages to Jotunheim.

It had been interesting to see a group of giants swiftly seal off the cave with ice and place a large stone with a carved warning nearby. They had been thorough and made the shallow cave opening disappear as if it had never been. Loki wondered if they had built structures in the other realms before the war and the following isolation, they seemed both organized and experienced. Then again, someone had built the massive cave, so they could have learned on their own realm.

The Aesir builders had not done such a smooth job, it had looked more like they had used explosives to collapse the cave the portal was hidden in and called it a day. It was sloppy, and not entirely effective, but Loki supposed it would be enough.

Helblindi met him and they exchanged short words before Loki returned home once more. He had done his duty.

Heimdall gave him a polite nod. “Will that be enough traveling for you today, my prince?”

“I'll let you know when my brain has thawed,” Loki sighed, rubbing his aching head. It was a product of the Bifrost travel, but why whine when no one cared? He went to his horse. He was tired and his eyes stung, he wanted a bed.

Asgard seemed uncomfortably warm and bright after the chill on Jotunheim. The trip from the Bifrost to the palace was enough to make him wish for eternal winter. He did not much like to consider it as a reprieve to have gone back for a short period of time. Asgard was his true home, _not_ Jotunheim. Though, winter child that he was he had to admit the climate would suit him better. Perhaps a warmer region? Jotunheim, like many other round planets had a much warmer climate around its equator. Asgard and its magical flatness was somewhat unusual in the universe.

Or perhaps northern Midgard? It was neutral territory and he would not stand out. The mortals were not unfriendly, either. He was not sure he would like to settle down in the Realm Eternal. The warrior-centric culture suited him ill. He was a scholar, a mage and a mischievous asshole. Asgard had no patience for his quirks and he had no interest in being the black sheep for a couple of thousand years until he died.

Inside the palace it was at least a bit cooler than it was outside. Loki ran a hand through his damp hair in an effort to dry it, to look like he was not bothered by the heat. Would it really be so bad to borrow the Casket and freeze Asgard a bit? Loki smirked picturing what Odin would have to say to that request, but all he saw was Laufey's grin.

He went to Odin's study and made his report in quick sentences, leaving out everything not related to the portal. It was not important that he had enjoyed his stay, nor that he had learned a lot about the culture. Heimdall and Odin saw everything anyway, or so he had been raised to believe. Truth was they both missed a lot. Helblindi had insinuated that the cave was hidden from view, and Loki had seen Laufey wield magic. It was hard to judge how powerful he might be, but he seemed at the very least to be well acquainted with the spells he had used.

“Did either of them touch you?” Odin asked when Loki quieted.

Loki looked questioningly at his father. It seemed like an odd question to ask in the context, and it was not like Loki had limped home with bruises and wounds. “No one tried to hurt me. I was treated well enough, considering.”

Odin nodded, seemingly pleased enough with that answer.

“Why?” Loki remembered the times they had touched him, but those instances hardly counted. Nothing had happened. Frost Giants were not even very cold.

“Oh, it is nothing,” Odin dismissed quickly, _too quickly_ , “the Frost Giants can inflict terrible frost bite just from touching.”

Loki was still perplexed, he would have found a healer if he had been hurt, but he chalked it up to fatherly concern because that was what made the most sense to him. It was nice to know his father cared, since Loki was not used to being showed much affection from Odin. He _knew_ his father cared, it was just hard to get that in writing.

Mostly he wondered what his father was really fishing for. None of the times he had been touched by a giant had been harmful to him. Laufey had been gentler when touching him than Thor, and while Helblindi flicking his ear had stung it was hardly worth mentioning.

“Alright. If I am excused I would like to get some sleep. It did not seem wise to do so in Jotunheim.”

Never mind that he had been too excited by everything new to stop exploring. Sleep had not even crossed his mind. He would not have eaten either if the giants had not offered and all but forced him to join their meal.

A nod and smile from his father later and Loki was off. Once outside the study he greeted Bjarne, the ambassador from Vanaheim.

“Ah, Prince Loki!” Bjarne smiled. “We missed you yesterday, your highness. I heard you went to Jotunheim.”

Loki shook his head. “You make it sound like I went on vacation.”

“With how tired you look I doubt it. How did it go?”

“Well, actually. No blood spilled and no war looming.”

Bjarne raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Are you going to see my father?”

Bjarne's mood soured. “I am indeed. He means to raise taxes again. The farmers are already on their knees and we may face a food shortage.”

“I wish you luck, Ambassador Bjarne,” Loki said.

“Thank you, your highness, I believe I will need all the luck I can get.”

Loki left and navigated the palace until he reached his chambers and his uncomfortably hot bedroom. Opening the windows allowed the warm air inside, but the fresh breeze tempted him too much. He liked fresh air. He liked cool air best, but the stale indoor air made his throat ache, so he would happily settle for warm air.

The servants were busy cleaning the rest of his rooms, but he saw no reason to send them away when they were working silently.

He slept on top of his blankets instead of under them. They were already thinner than most preferred, he fiercely disliked being hot even as he slept, but he simply could not bear even a wisp of thread at that moment. It would be better once he had adapted to the temperature. It took him a long time to get used to shifts in temperature, especially warmer ones.

Even though he ended up having an abnormally clear nightmare about the dead children in the ice, he slept for a long time and woke up feeling better than he had in months. He did not even have a stomach ache for once.

There was no time to dwell on bad dreams that day, it was autumn on Asgard and as such it was time to collect tax from the farmers that had sold their harvest or slaughtered livestock. The tax auditors were reporting back to the royal court and that made them all drown in tedious paperwork. Which meant all hands on deck, do not skirt your duties, and that nobody was exempt from doing their share.

He and Thor had been avoiding their duties anyway on the day the Frost Giants had shown up in Asgard. Well, Thor avoided duties in general unless it involved fighting or showing off. Why should the golden prince bother when he had a baby brother who diligently sat through hours of boring tasks?

Which perhaps was overly bitter when Thor had dragged him off to celebrate his birthday. It was just his luck that his birthday was the same day as Asgard had massacred Jotun children.

At least Loki would spend the day inside. Skipping the morning meal was habit by now, it always smelled viler than any other meal, instead he went straight to the room where he was supposed to be. He was not the first person to arrive, but he was not last either and that was good enough for him to seem like a dutiful son. Not that he was anything but, it just had to show since Thor could just breathe and be more respected no matter how much he slacked.

It was grossly unfair, even though that sounded childish.

Loki sat with a few others around a large table. Normally they used it to hold meetings, but it was also used when they needed to spread out and share paperwork. Like hundreds of tax forms detailing who had paid what. He only had to sign and put the royal seal on everything, but before he did so he liked knowing what he was signing. He would not put it past the others to try to sneak things under his nose.

“How was Jotunheim?” Njord, one of his father's closest friends asked a little into the chore. It would be too much to ask for Odin to approach him personally, he often sent his minions to do his bidding. Njord was once one of Loki's tutors. His face was weathered and his hair white, but he was still fit and strong. Not to mention a huge racist.

Loki looked up, caught off guard by the sudden question. “Cold.” The others in the room laughed, as if he had told a joke. “No really, it is cold. Not even the giants venture out at night unless they have to.”

“I am surprised Laufey did not chop you up and dump your corpse on the ground for Odin to find,” Njord muttered. It was hard to tell if he was pleased it had not occurred or displeased that Loki had outwitted certain death.

Loki grinned cheekily. “You should know I could charm anyone.”

“I fought in the war, they are vicious beasts,” Njord commented. “We barely got a word out of them, they just snarled and growled like dogs.”

Loki wanted to argue, but he did not. There would be little point to it. He shrugged and went back to his paperwork. He felt like a coward for not correcting the prejudices, but he had never won so far and he would not now either. The people in the royal court frequently said derogatory things about elves and humans and sometimes even the Vanir. Anyone who was not Aesir. What was said about Jotuns was worse, and Loki did not like the giants enough to be mocked for years to come. He was whispered about enough as it was.

If he had been as favored as Thor was he would have gladly told them what he thought, but that type of favoritism was not granted second sons who, like Laufey had put it, looked nothing like Odin.

Perhaps that answered all the questions about why he had to struggle to be liked, perhaps Odin could not like him since it was so obvious he was not of the King's flesh and blood.

 

* * *

 

Hunger eventually forced Loki to sneak into the kitchen to find a few things his stomach would tolerate. It was long past dinner time, and the place was almost deserted. He took a deep breath and regretted the fact that he would most likely wake up with a aching stomach again.

Fortunately he found some uncooked vegetables and fruits which he washed and then cut up. Placing it all into a bowl he had a brief flashback from eating on Jotunheim and smiled. Their food was eaten mostly raw, and the food on Alfheim was never cooked long either. Perhaps that was how he should eat.

“What has you in such a good mood, my prince?” one of the servants asked. He was one of the old cooks, easily three times as wide as Loki.

“Just a memory.”

“Want me to start a pot, my prince?”

“No, thank you,” Loki said quickly.

He sat in the empty dining hall to eat. He wondered what Thor was up to, since he had not seen his brother in a while now. Not since parting ways on Jotunheim.

It was late at night before he went to sleep, but not in his bed. It was too hot, so he slept sitting against the smooth stone wall. He had another nightmare about the children in the ice. It was less clear than the night before, but it did not feel like a normal dream. He saw them rise from their frozen tomb and walk toward him before he abruptly woke.

He spent most of the night after that awake, staring at the stone walls. Walls were dull. He wondered if he could make that weird fungi from Jotunheim grow in his room, or maybe he could get some of Alfheim's flowering vines. They grew indoors in most homes.

 

* * *

 

As dawn broke and the orange sun threatened to raise the temperature even more he decided to confront Odin about the whole mess with the children. He quickly washed and dressed before walking through the mostly empty corridors. By some miracle he managed to catch his father before the old King had started his duties.

“I need to talk to you about Jotunheim, father,” Loki started unceremoniously.

“Did something happen while you were there? How did they treat you?” Odin asked worriedly.

“It has nothing to do with that. Nobody tried to hurt me with anything other than words.” Loki paused to gather his thoughts while his fingers restlessly moved against his clothes. “We burn our dead. They freeze them. Preserve them. Laufey showed me the children...”

“It was war, these things happen,” Odin said with a weary sigh. It was a clear dismissal, but Loki was not done. He was a royal prince, blood or no blood, he could argue with the King without consequence, and he damned well would in this case.

“Father, please. Was that really after -”

“Yes,” Odin interrupted. “Laufey was, understandably, furious. I may not have agreed with their invasion of Midgard, but they did not deserve that.”

“I have had nightmares since I left. I understand that war is a terrible business, I do, I just cannot see Asgard's soldiers killing and raping _children_.”

“You do not understand war, Loki. Death, perhaps, but not war. You are still a boy more than a man.”

He decided to take the dismissal for what it was. He could not argue against it, because for all the petty skirmishes he had seen he had never been to a proper war. He was miraculously always needed at home when there was one raging somewhere. Thor was not spared so it seemed to have nothing to do with his age. “Helblindi is a lot more ready for the crown than Thor,” he said instead.

“He is a vicious opponent. He has that in common with his father.”

“Oh? Well, that vicious beast made me hot tea so I would not be so cold. And he scolded his father for allowing me to be outside during the night when the temperature plummets. You are telling me to excuse dead children because it happened during a war, but you are not willing to think the Jotuns capable of being civilized in times of peace.” Loki belatedly realized he had sounded a little more vicious than intended. What was he doing defending monsters?

“It is not that I think them uncivilized, or that I do not think that Laufey is a good King to his people. They are in fact much like us. My frustration with Jotunheim is the lack of cooperation. I can not get them to even negotiate anything further than what we have already agreed upon. Laufey is frustratingly stubborn and refuses to budge.”

Stubborn would be the friendliest thing to be when someone had slaughtered your family, Loki thought, but held his tongue before it slipped out. It was much easier to keep his mouth under control towards Odin than it was towards Laufey. “Let me try,” he said instead.

“You are not going back to Jotunheim. The slightest provocation may cause them to attack you, and I will not have war again. Nor would I like to bury my sons.”

“No, they will not. We sniped at each other a great deal and nothing came of it. Helblindi and Laufey would talk to _me_ , father. They resent you a great deal, perhaps they simply need a negotiator who they have not fought against. I was too young to have been directly involved, I could make them listen if you would but let me try.”

“Perhaps you have a point. However, Thor is next in line, if anyone other than me should negotiate it is him.”

“Yes, father,” Loki automatically yielded, defeated.

“It is not that I think less of you. Thor is older and will inherit the crown, he must learn on his own.”

A whopping two years older. Just imagine all the wisdom Thor had gained in that time, Loki mused bitterly. “Could I accompany him? You know he is quick to act and slow to -”

“Loki,” Odin interrupted with an obvious warning in his voice.

“I am merely telling the truth, and you know it, father,” Loki muttered. “You can call me a liar day and night, but you know I speak more truthfully than anyone else at court.”

Odin patted his shoulder to calm him down. “If Thor will take you, then yes. I will speak with him and we will send a messenger first.”

Loki nodded. “They were not how I thought them to be. Our tutors described them as little more than animals.”

“Frost Giants are much like us, as I said. It is natural to think ones own species superior. Laufey is every bit as intelligent as an Aesir, though you should not doubt that he and his kin are capable of being cruel.”

“Do a lot of them use magic?” Loki asked.

“I imagine they have some who do, and _no_ you cannot go there to study if you find one. Do not think Laufey has forgiven our transgression, he would hurt you just to get to me. Do not allow them to lull you into a false security. They are very capable of playing out a plot over many years before achieving their goal.”

Loki sighed. It had not been the reason for his question, but he assumed Odin already knew about Laufey since he had, after all, fought a long battle against the giant. Or, so he had always been told. He was not sure what was true anymore. Stories had a way of getting embellished over time.

And... Odin had said he had fallen for Helblindi's doppelganger tricks.

“I must go back to the business of running this realm, please seek out your mother if there is anything else.”

Loki nodded. It was how their father-son talks usually went.

_Go see your mother._

_Go play with Thor._

Never, ever, did the old King take a break from everything else to deal with Loki when he needed it.

In truth Odin had never had much time for either of his sons. It suited Thor just fine, he was more interested in his wild parties, his friends and his poorly planned quests for glory. Loki had this annoyingly clingy and childish need to be seen as something else than Thor's brother. To be important just because _he_ existed. To be acknowledged and seen.

Most of the time he felt invisible.

Frustrated and still wanting answers he went to find Frigga. Predictable like clockwork, perhaps. Getting her to talk to him was easy, but finding her never was. It took him two hours before he found her in the library. Unusual for her, normally it was Loki's retreat. She preferred the gardens where she could spend hours on her own, but there were days when Loki spent most of a day looking for her in all the places she frequented only to find her somewhere surprising.

At times he wondered if she actively avoided him.

“Mother?” he called out when he saw her.

Frigga spun around gracefully with a smile on her lips. “Loki, how good of you to come see your mother. Is the heat bothering you?”

“I am indoors most of the day,” Loki assured before she worried. “Could we talk? I tried to ask father about the Frost Giants, but he gave me the cold shoulder.” Petty wordplay. It never amused her.

“Loki,” Frigga said in warning.

“Mother,” Loki said in the exact same tone.

Frigga smiled again. “Oh, what is it then? I know very little about Jotunheim, less about the giants who live there. You know I prefer nature over people and there is precious little flora on Jotunheim. Ice does not interest me much.”

“What we were taught about the war, is it all true?” Loki asked to start the conversation off. His fingers started to worry his clothes under her gaze.

“You know the winner writes the history books. I imagine the tale has been told in Asgard's favor, just like the tale of the war with Vanaheim was told in Asgard's favor.” It was a topic he had learned early on to avoid. Frigga detested anything related to the Aesir-Vanir War. He wondered if she also disliked her marriage, but he had never gathered enough courage to ask her.

Though, if she did, she would never admit the truth.

“Laufey said some things, like how he did not plan on invading.” Loki looked away from her steady gaze and focused on picking on a loose thread in his sleeve.

Frigga slapped his hand. “Stop fidgeting. He never stated any intention outright to us, or anyone else. Frost Giants would simply show up and annihilate villages. You can see how that would unsettle your father. He thought it best to stop them when people came running to him for aid.”

“Yes,” Loki agreed, and he could. “I just do not know... I liked them.”

“And so you want to believe them. I understand, I do, just do not forget that there is always at least three sides to the truth. Yours, mine and what actually happened.” Frigga reached out and neatened his hair. “Such a mess today. Did you sleep?”

Loki stepped back to avoid her hands. “Not much. When is father going to announce that I am not his son, just some charity case?”

Frigga made a face. “I should never have told you. It was not my intention to cause you so much grief,” she said softly, but Loki wondered if she was honest. He had a knack for telling when people lied and this felt like a lie.

“In Jotunheim they asked who you had an affair with. In Vanaheim they assume I am a changeling. Let us not get started on what they say here at court, behind my back.”

“Like I said, the truth is not a simple creature. As long as no announcement is made you are our son.”

Loki stilled a little, because the underlying meaning to her words was that once his heritage was announced to the realms he would no longer be their son.

“Was it pity that made you take me in?”

“Love. We both love you, Loki.” Frigga looked at him sternly, daring him to dispute her and ruin her image as the perfect mother and wife. “You know we love you. I admit we could have handled things better, been more honest, but nothing was done out of spite. Your father wants to protect you from the truth, not hold it over your head.”

“I love you too, and I love father and Thor,” Loki said because she would want him to. “It is just... I do not fit in.”

“When I first moved here I did not feel like I fit in either. Now I cannot imagine living anywhere else. Believe it or not I was wildly unpopular here when I married your father. Queen I might have been, but most people treated me like an evil witch. It took forever, and no small amount of false smiles, to prove I was not going to be the end of Asgard.” Frigga picked a book out of a shelf and held it out to him.

“The people love you.” He took the book and read the cover. It was about Jotunheim. Clearly he had played into her game well enough if she was helping him find information.

“Now, yes. Some of us have to work hard for that over a long period of time. Thor and Odin take it for granted because they have never been treated differently. They are everything Asgard cherishes. Strong, capable warriors. You and me, we have to prove ourselves, and that does not make us any less worthy.”

“Have I told you that you are the best mother in all the realms?” Loki flattered. He had gotten very good at flattery.

“Only when you wanted something,” she deadpanned.

“Why do I have a Jotun name?”

“I know not. Odin chose it for you before he gave you to me. Personally I would have named you Mischief.” Frigga shrugged, a smug smile curving her lips.

“Mother,” Loki sighed.

“Oh, shush, it might be from his mothers side of the family. You know your grandfather Bor chose to bed a giantess in order to produce heirs,” she sneered slightly. “Now, do your mother a favor and eat something, I have not seen you at meals in a long time. I expect that to change, Loki.”

Loki bowed his head and bid her a good day.

He did not go straight to eat. He took a detour to his rooms to place the book on his desk and dig up the old chest Frigga had given him when she had told him about his heritage. Or lack thereof. It contained some carved ivory beads and some kind of pin which was also ivory.

There had also been a blanket – Frigga had told him it had been wrapped around him when Odin had brought him home. That green blanket was something he always had with him in case he needed to sleep outdoors. It had useful spells and enchantments on it and he had spent hours tracing the embroidery. Learning how to use magic to always have a few items handy was a blessing when Thor decided to go adventuring.

He had looked at the ivory items for hours too, but he had never seen anything similar on his travels and no merchant had been selling similar trinkets. He did not want to ask outright, too afraid of what he might learn. There were markings he could not decipher on them, but just like before they provided him no clues about his origin. He decided to always keep them with him just in case.

Food, then.

A last meal alone before he was forced to endure the dubious pleasure that was an Asgardian Royal Dinner.

Perhaps he should spend a few months in Alfheim to get away. Not that Odin would allow it, but one could always dream. The food the elves ate was far better suited to his sensitive stomach than what was served on Asgard.

He stood for a while with his head against the wall to feel the cool stone.

He hoped winter would come soon.

 

* * *

 

The next day was scheduled for the opening of a newly constructed building that would house Asgard's only orphanage. It was the typical dull affair full of nobles and royalty pretending they cared and gushing over children no one would adopt at the end of the day.

The old building had been made of wood, in the poor district of the city, and had all but collapsed in on itself before anyone had deign to do anything about it. The ambassadors from Vanaheim and Alfheim looked on with cynical eyes and polite smiles. The commoners – carefully kept at bay by Einherjar guards – seemed to believe the lie, seemed to think that this truly was something the royal family did out of the goodness of their hearts.

To Loki it was cruel, not just because it reminded him that he could very well have grown up in an old wooden building with a leaky roof, but because from the moment a child was placed here their fate was sealed. They got very little education, no one wanted them for apprentices, and they would grow up to populate the poorest district and have children of their own which they could barely feed.

Children the army relied on for the front lines.

The poor and the unwanted were expendable.

The only ones who seemed as disillusioned as Loki were the caretakers. They had suffered the indifference of the rich for decades and centuries and they were clearly _tired_ of being given something only when it suited the elite.

The royal palace was plated in gold, the official buildings were flawless and spotless, but the poor was never given any share of Asgard's wealth.

As soon as the spectacle was over with the ambassador from Alfheim approached Loki. “Lovely building, My Prince,” he said casually.

“Built in record time too, Ambassador,” Loki said just as casually, since they both knew it had been built by prisoners from Alfheim who had protested against the Aesir rule.

 

 


	3. What Is In A Name?

Laufey paced the new throne room down below ground restlessly, as he had done for half a night. There were two guards overseeing the builders and decorators who were busy with their handiwork, but essentially he was alone with his oldest child. As alone as was possible anyway. There were too many people milling about in Utgard at this time of year.

The need for a new throne room was not particularly pressing, all things considered, but since he had a feeling his plans were being postponed he needed something to do. Projects this small were good distractions. Not to mention it would keep Hailstrum from complaining that his son had to stand guard out in the cold. While he was not so crude as to use _Frost Giants_ and _frostbite_ in the same sentence, he was crude enough to think the guards could grow thicker skin or change jobs if it bothered them.

“So, who is he?” Helblindi asked.

“Who he is, apart from your new favorite pet? I will tell you who he is not, he is not a son of Odin, not of Frigga and not of any other stinking daydweller dungpile. His skin turns blue when touched. He smells like _us_. He was not cold despite it being the middle of winter here. _And do not think I did not notice what was in that tea_ ,” he growled.

“So? It paid off. Poison to Aesir, comfortable burn to us,” Helblindi said with a smirk. “We needed the proof. Not all of us can use magic like you.”

“Perhaps, just perhaps, you could _trust me_? Out of the two of us I am the one who can see best,” Laufey grumbled. “As much as I enjoy pissing on Odin's robes we could benefit from a friend in Asgard. If he had been Aesir -”

“We have the antidote,” Helblindi pointed out calmly.

“Truth,” Laufey said with a cruel smile, “but then he would not have been so sweet to you, would he, my blind little wolf cub?”

Helblindi did not rise to the bait, but Laufey could tell there was something there. It was rare for his oldest son to show any interest in general. Helblindi had always been far too interested in whatever went on inside his own head.

“What do we do about it?” Helblindi asked.

“ _That_ is the real dilemma.” Not even the idiots that ruled Asgard could justify stealing a child, so if exposed he could do some petty damage to Odin's reputation. That would hurt Loki too, and he did not necessarily want that. If he hurt Loki then Loki would not return to them on his own once he found out about his heritage. It needed careful handling.

“You like him,” Helblindi accused in an amused tone of voice.

“And you did not, hm?” he replied with a grunt. “Rare to see you bother with a stranger. Pity he seems to have no clue himself he is not Aesir.” There was a very real possibility that Loki was Laufey's own child. “We do not have many missing.”

“I want my brother to be alive as much as you do, but if it is the same Loki we lost, there is no way Odin took him by accident,” Helblindi cautioned. “He could have a plan we are not aware of.”

“Do not delude yourself. Odin does very little by accident. Misguided morals, yes. _Stupidity_ , yes. Accident, no. Even if he is not he has been raised as a prince. We could easily adopt him if we cannot find the family, but besides that the bond is still there. It is too faint to really tell me anything other than being of our race, but if I can amplify it I could easily tell whose brat he is. Or... or if I could remove the spell that hides him...”

“Asgard will not take kindly to having had one of ours among them. Exposing him in any sort of public setting might just cause problems.”

“Tricky,” Laufey admitted, still pacing.

“It is about time for their messenger to arrive,” Raze pointed out.

“We need to send a delegation to Asgard somehow,” Laufey decided.

“Why not ask them to come here?” Helblindi asked.

“We will likely have to, but it cannot be done then. On an official mission in foreign territory they would not separate, but on their own territory they will rely more on their advantage of being the lords of the land. Besides, the little princeling will need to feel safe when we turn his world on its head. He was trembling like a kitten, he does not trust us.”

Laufey growled. It was an unwanted complication to have to lure Asgard into a diplomatic trap.

Helblindi growled as well, but softly, and stopped Laufey's pacing by hugging him. They did not hug nearly enough lately, The Mourning always made Laufey so focused on the dead that he forgot the living.

“Mother will be back soon,” Helblindi reminded.

“You would think all our wildlife would go extinct the way she hunts each year.”

“You mope, she kills.”

“I do not mope. _I_ have a realm to rule, _I_ cannot go missing for months simply because a killing spree soothes the nerves.” Laufey nuzzled into his son's neck and stroked his head.

“Was she going to Svartalfheim after?” Helblindi asked.

“Mm. Their elders need to acknowledge her claim. Do you know what gives me a boner? Suppose Loki is my son and he ends up on Odin's throne. I will practically own two realms. Soon three.”

Helblindi slapped him on the back of his head, clearly tired of his mood. “ _Ow_.” Laufey was somewhat surprised the brat had not tired sooner. Helblindi had inherited very little from him, apart from looks.

“You are never satisfied! You rule our realm, that should be enough. I get a headache just doing your job once in a while.”

“But I want the Casket back, and while we are at it I want to rip Odin's heart out with my teeth and shove it up his wife's cunt.” The last part was snarled more than spoken.

Laufey was pleased to note the workers in the room spooked a little. Raze and the other guard however, were made of sterner stuff than the workers. Naturally, being Hailstrum's child Raze had always been hard to faze.

“If Loki is mine I just might do that to. Thin as a stick, looks like he never has enough food. Would it really be too much too ask that people who steal children should treat them decently?”

“And then they call me a bloodthirsty brute.”

“It is a family trait, you should display it proudly!” Laufey held his son at arm's length away from his body by gripping his shoulders. “Start with whipping that sad excuse of an army into something I can actually use. They have been slacking off for days. Soon they will start having tea and amiable chats with our enemies instead of slaughtering them. Unacceptable!”

“Because of The Mourning,” Helblindi said patiently. He had always had a soft heart, more interested in keeping people happy than ruling over them. He certainly did not take after his mother in the slightest, that boy.

“Most of them are skinny younglings, they have no such excuse,” Laufey waved his hand impatiently even though he realized Helblindi would not see the gesture. “You never know when you need a vicious army full of murderous giants. You know your second mother will do much worse to them if they are not up to standard when she returns. Go! Spare them her fury.”

Laufey smirked to himself. One son on the throne of Jotunheim and one on the throne of Asgard.

Yes, he definitely had a boner.

“Huh,” he muttered to himself. “Time to become more friendly with Asgard.”

He needed Loki to come back when his wife could see him, because that would be a spectacular show if nothing else, and the best way to get one of Asgard's princes back on Jotunheim would be to leave the next messenger from Odin alive. Give the old fool a sense of security.

She would know for sure if the boy was indeed theirs, though he had no real doubt on the fact despite Helblindi's cautioning. Loki not only had the correct name, he looked just like his dead siblings – had they been under a glamour to make them appear Aesir.

Hopefully his wife would have calmed down after such a long hunting trip. As much as his species loved to cuddle and snuggle with family members, they were also violent and rarely forgave transgressions. Farbauti especially had a temper that would have cowed Ymir himself. Possibly even his mother, the former Queen.

Thankfully the two would never meet.

“Is this really wise?” Grundroth, one of the guards, asked.

“Getting the army in shape is always wise,” Laufey said with a toothy grin. “And when you are old enough to have children you will understand that wisdom means nothing. Love is not wise.”

Raze muttered about rookies never keeping their mouths shut and slapped Grundroth hard over the head.

“There is nowhere near enough green in here,” Laufey told the decorators.

“Green?”

“Oh, my apologies, did I use the wrong language?” Laufey snapped. “Yes, _green_. We have a wall here that is blank,” he pointed it out, somewhat unnecessarily. “Perhaps I should do what my mother did? Tie up and torture people who annoy me... or, you could put the royal coat of arms there.”

The decorators bowed and scurried away to do his bidding.

“Impossible to find competent people these days,” he muttered. “When I was the crown prince we could have had this done in a mere handful of days.”

“With liberal use of violence, sure,” Raze agreed.

“Well, you only really need to kill one here or there to set an example for the others.”

Grundroth was looking very uncomfortable, so Laufey smirked at him to make the boy pale a bit. Nothing lifted his spirits more than terrorizing people.

His second oldest entered then. “Scaring the guards?”

“Nonsense, I scare everyone, I would never settle for just the guards,” Laufey scoffed. “I just sent your older brother to deal with the army, and now another wolf cub appears.”

“Mm, I figured he would make less fuss if he did not meet me. Thiazi sent me.”

“And what does your second father want, Varg?”

“We need to delay, the forces from Thrymheim are not ready.”

“Good,” Laufey said.

“Good?” Varg looked surprised.

“You have two years.”

“Why two, father?”

“There were Aesir princelings here. Did you hear? No? Well, some youths found a portal and decided to see where it went, upon finding themselves in The Realm Eternal they ran back. But they were followed. What are the Aesir princes called, Varg?”

“Thor is the crown prince. I know he has a brother, but I never heard a name. All they say about him is that he uses magic.”

Laufey smirked. “Loki.”

“Loki?”

“Mhm. Little Loki who was not very bothered by the cold.”

“Mother will tear their throats out,” Varg muttered quietly.

“Oh, I am sure she will, and you _had better_ have that army in shape by then....”

“Will do. I suppose that explains the ruins outside.”

Laufey studied his claws. “The throne room was already in ruins.”

“Mhm.”

“I was _upset_.”

“So I saw,” Varg drawled.

 

 


	4. A Peace On Paper Only

“The messenger returns?” Odin spun on his heel and looked at Heimdall who had activated the Bifrost.

Normally when the yearly request to renegotiate the peace treaty was sent out to Jotunheim, Odin waited hours close by the Bifrost before Heimdall used it to collect the maimed body of the, sometimes alive, messenger. Laufey and his soldiers had some spectacularly creative ways of torturing people even taking into account that Laufey likely was a descendant of Ice. Needless to say, there was no line of volunteers waiting to fulfill this hazardous duty. They kept it on the down low to avoid completely running out of people to send, but word had spread anyway.

He had contemplated bringing Loki this year to make the boy less positive to the Frost Giants, but in the end he had decided against it. Loki would be too likely to volunteer to go himself and Odin was not in the mood to listen to the boy for the moment. Thor was much easier to manage.

Heimdall, meanwhile, made no comment. The messenger himself appeared and he seemed as healthy as when he left. “Jotunheim received the message, My King,” the young man reported briskly.

“Excellent,” Odin said. They always did, but normally Laufey simply used his claws to scrabble death threats on the back of the parchment in the messenger's blood. They may have a peace on paper, but Jotunheim was more than willing to look for any excuse to break it. Or, they had been.

Perhaps Laufey was merely wary to lose more children. Sparing the giants who had trespassed into Asgard might have made him more friendly.

“They had no reply, and suggested I leave,” the messenger went on.

Odin smiled patiently at the servant. “No one attacked you?”

“No.”

“Thank you for your service. That will be all,” Odin said happily. Miracles did happen.

The messenger started to leave when Heimdall grabbed the youth by the shoulder. “Not so fast.”

The young man's face changed slightly and Odin groaned. “Loki.”

“Father,” Loki said cheerfully.

“What is this trickery, Loki?”

“No one wanted to go. I merely made sure you could have your message delivered.”

“Tell him what you learned,” Heimdall prompted.

Loki shrugged the shoulder not in Heimdall's grip. “There was little to learn. Prince Helblindi accepted the message. He was surprised to see me deliver it.”

“You dropped the illusion for them?”

“Of course,” Loki said. “I would rather not get maimed. They treated me well last time. I lied though, he did not ask me to leave. He asked me to stay a while. I rather got the impression he fancies me.”

Odin rubbed a hand over his face, because he knew full well that Helblindi and Loki were brothers by blood. “I have ignored your dalliances with other men, but I would rather you did not sully yourself with a Jotun,” he said a little harsher than necessary.

Loki looked hurt, but said nothing.

“Off you go,” Odin ordered.

Loki stalked off quickly.

“Why now?” he asked Heimdall. As much as this new development pleased him he could not help but worry about Loki. “Do they know about Loki?”

“I would assume not, as they would have taken him back with force instead of allowing him to go back here. Loki made a good impression,” Heimdall said. “I cannot see them when they go underground, however. Their witch Queen weaves powerful magic. If the crown prince finds him pleasing to look at we could use it in our favor.”

“I cannot allow it.” Odin sighed deeply. “I had never expected to like the thing when I brought it back.”

Certainly not the way he loved his own flesh and blood, but Loki was family by now and he was often very useful to keep around – if nothing else then as a playmate for Thor. He had the added benefit of having a solid work ethic.

“There is a new child.”

“Oh?”

“Another boy, barely out of nursing. They keep him hidden most of the time, but he does resemble Loki a good deal.”

The waves crashing into the bridge foundations and the sounds from the waterfall was a dull roar in the background.

“I do feel bad for them,” Odin said, “for their losses. It was not an honorable move, and I know we deserve more than what we have gotten, but perhaps they are ready to move on.”

“Perhaps,” Heimdall agreed. “Do not underestimate Laufey.”

“No, I already made that mistake,” Odin pointed to the metal covering his missing eye, despite knowing it had been Helblindi's work. “I underestimated the bitch he has taken as a wife too. With how meek Loki was as a boy you would never had guessed he was born to those two bloodthirsty beasts.”

Heimdall said nothing as Odin left. The gatekeeper was a man of few words, but never had there been a more loyal gatekeeper than Heimdall.

Preparations would have to be made. He would take advantage of the friendlier mindset of Jotunheim and forge a more normal relationship between the realms. He had never wanted, nor intended, hundreds of years of hostility when he got involved. At the very least he wanted a normal trade to flourish between them again.

Taking the runt had initially been a poorly planned act of kindness. He had thought Laufey dead. Helblindi had been alive, but severely wounded. The fury of a thousand scorned women could not measure up to the Jotun Queen, but at that time he had seen neither hide nor hair of her. If someone had wanted to take the throne from Laufey in all the confusion, the babe was in danger. Odin would much rather deal with Laufey than some rash youth. Laufey at least seemed to act on some kind of reason.

Knowing what he did now, it had been foolish to think the boy abandoned. Yes, he was in a temple. Yes, he seemed alone. But he had since learned that the Frost Giants considered temples sacred ground and never harmed anyone inside. Ironically that knowledge came from Laufey's scribbled threats.

The babe had been as safe as he could have been, at least from other Frost Giants.

In the end Laufey had lived. Farbauti showed up later that evening, covered in blood probably not her own. He had dropped the casket and the child off in Asgard. The plan, then, was to keep the boy safe and return him as soon as they had agreed to a more fleshed out peace treaty.

Asgard's army, his army, had acted on its own on Tyr's command. There were no further talks after that. Laufey refused all official contact with Asgard, and Odin had understood. He had a son and he understood the fury. If anything had happened to Thor he would have been in the same mindset.

Not giving the boy back at that point, well, he supposed he could have, but he had never been in the habit of leaving potential weapons behind. Any child with that amount of magic could have grown up to be a threat, so Odin had opted to keep the runt.

 

 


	5. Winter Pranks

Loki suffered through the abnormally hot autumn by largely staying indoors and burying himself in work. It was easy to do that when Asgard was unusually reliant on physical records and most commoners wanted everything written down on parchment as an insurance. The mild winter, when it finally arrived, was muddy and wet instead of truly cold. He despised it when the weather decided warmth was the new fashion statement it wanted to make.

Frigga had finally coaxed him outside to explore the Midwinter Market on the final day before it closed. There were always a lot of curious and unusual wares on display. He also enjoyed the exotic goods that the fruit merchants from Alfheim sold, especially a type of meaty white melons that he was told only thrived in colder areas.

This was largely why Frigga insisted they go together, so she could find foods he would eat. They rarely ended up on the dinner table, his tastes were apparently too eclectic for Asgard's court, but at least he himself knew what he could eat and Frigga could pose as a concerned mother out among the public.

“Loki!” the furious bellow of Thor was heard throughout the market place like the booming sound of thunder out of a clear sky.

Frigga, who was standing next to Loki by a small merchant stall selling crystals, gasped in horror when Thor strode up to them. He was practically fuming. And blue. Very blue.

“Fret not, it washes off,” Loki said quietly to their mother before Thor was close enough to hear. He did not want to scare her with his little prank. “Behold the mighty Frost Giant!” he announced loudly to the commoners.

He heard their laughter while he ran, likely they thought it was planned as entertainment, which made it look less unbecoming of the crown prince to chase his younger brother around instead of acting like a calm and rational future king. A few children screamed and hid under the stalls. Thor was hot on his heels and acting very much like a dangerous blue alien. Running away from Thor was possible as long as he did not have his ridiculous hammer. Flying was cheating and Loki was the faster of the two on foot. He rarely slipped on Asgard no matter how slick the ground was.

Dodging shocked, laughing or unimpressed commoners and dashing through narrow openings between stalls, they must have looked like children playing games. Thor was mostly bulky muscles, so he lost more speed on the narrow turns and had to take the long way round a few times because he could hardly fit the narrowest places.

He did not catch Loki, but Hogun did and in that moment Loki hated him. Because he would, and did, hold Loki still while Thor punched him hard twice.

Thor really was furious this time.

“You do that again and I will -”

Loki was not listening, though it was not by choice. There was a ringing in his head preventing him from paying any attention to his brother's words. He thought he understood the gist of it even so.

Thor stormed off after saying his piece, Hogun followed suit but not before giving Loki a punch of his own, to his gut rather than the face, and a rough shove. Loki did nothing to retaliate or defend himself because if he did not then Thor would not see fit to continue the fight.

He sat down on a barrel to gather his wits and calm down before he did anything ungraceful, like pass out. His brute of a brother certainly was strong. He always won their fights, so Loki had learned early that running was a far better option.

“Was that necessary?” Fandral asked.

Loki looked up and saw the warrior looking at him. He had not cared who was nearby, but it galled that he had not noticed the other man. Usually he kept an eye out for Thor's merry band of misfit adventurers. “Soap and water and he is as good as new,” Loki muttered. “Better even, as he would stop smelling like a common beggar.”

He must have bit his tongue, which was stupid, because it hurt to talk and he had to swallow a lot of blood.

“You always were an odd one,” Fandral mused, “but you should not make jokes about the Jotuns.”

“You know what, that is funny, because the ones I met in Jotunheim had a sense of humor,” Loki muttered. “Far superior to yours, though that says very little.”

Fandral sighed and held a hand out. Loki was not his friend. The Warriors Three were Thor's friends. Sometimes they ganged up on him, but Fandral was a little more supportive of Loki than the others. Sometimes he was even downright pleasant. Loki allowed the older man to help him stand. He knew why the man was pleasant, and he himself was not above being friendly for the sake of some... recreation.

Loki was meek while Fandral led him to the healers, mostly because everyone preferred him that way. Being seen as harmless was always a good strategy. He knew already it was nothing big, but he had no objection to seeing a healer. “I am fine, you know.”

“You are more delicate than Thor is, and your mother would murder me in cold blood if I allowed her baby boy to suffer. Besides, that was hardly the worst prank you have pulled.”

It was not true that he was more delicate, but Loki barely heard the insult anymore. Instead Loki grinned, mood lifted a bit. “I did it this past spring, you know. Just proves Thor does not wash himself very often.”

“What?”

“It is his soap, you dull mercenary.”

Fandral smiled. “I love it when you turn that creative mind of yours on our _enemies_. You should come with us more. Clearly you are bored to tears.”

“Taxes will do that to a man. Maybe I should just get you drunk on elven wine again. You were fun.” Loki smiled at the memory, because while he did not sleep around much he did enjoy a good tumble. And Fandral had been good. Better than a fair few others he had taken to bed.

“That is not happening,” Fandral objected.

“Oh, do not be such a prude! I will let you be on top this time.”

Fandral stopped dead in his tracks. For a heartbeat he seemed interested, then he frowned. “Still no.”

Loki pouted prettily.

“Not working,” Fandral chuckled.

“I do not even get a kiss?”

“No.”

“Cruel. I might not like you anymore,” Loki complained. It was not that Loki loved the man, he was hurt and he wanted to be touched and comforted. Cuddled. And he was a man, and a little sex always lifted his mood.

They had arrived at the healer. Loki was fussed over and Fandral flirted with everyone but Loki. When they left Loki was caught up in his own thoughts. There would be a feast that night, but if Thor was still angry with him Loki would rather not attend. Being mocked by his own brother was only funny so many times before it started to hurt, and that point had been reached years ago.

Fandral placed his hand on Loki's shoulder. “You have not been yourself since summer ended.”

Loki shrugged the hand off. Fandral was not one of the people with ulterior motives, the ones who only wanted to be around Loki because he was a prince, but he was not a close friend. Or even his friend. Fandral was Thor's friend, he reminded himself again.

“It is just the weather,” Loki said dismissively.

Fandral laughed at him. “It is never 'just' anything with you, Princess Loki.”

Loki growled. “I could have your head for insulting me, mercenary.”

Fandral shrugged and walked in a circle around him while Loki continued to walk to his room, eyes looking him over critically. “Are you wearing that tonight?”

“No.” If he went to the feast he would not be wearing his comfortable everyday clothes.

“Be my doll?”

Loki sighed. He never had understood Fandral's obsession with dressing him up. It had been going on forever, and the first time Thor had laughed his ass off. Fandral persisted, clearly enjoying the little game. Loki suspected it was his poorly hidden sexual interest in men that took odd shapes when Fandral failed to indulge it.

He made a lazy gesture with his hand, accepting, although he was not terribly enthusiastic about the idea of being little more than an over-sized toy.

“You will owe me,” Loki decided, still not giving up on putting his earlier plan into action.

Once inside his rooms Loki undressed. Normally Aesir frowned upon nudity, but this little game had made both Fandral and himself used to the idea of Loki being naked while Fandral picked clothes for him to wear.

The first thing Fandral did was take a thin strip of cloth, usually used to tie up Loki's hair. He had been letting it grow long recently, much to Frigga's displeasure. Loki looked on in fascination as Fandral did some elaborate binding around his balls, the base of his cock and then over the length of it.

“Like that?” The older man asked when Loki shivered a little at his touch.

Loki hummed contentedly. He knew this would prevent him from coming, from getting hard even. It was kinky and Loki did like that. His tastes in sex were not the standard ones. He typically blamed Alfheim for corrupting him.

“I think mother and father would be scandalized if I showed up dressed in this,” Loki teased coyly.

“They would. Can you use your magic to get this inside you?” Fandral held up a vial of oil.

Loki frowned. “Yes.” He did as told, he could be obedient, and shifted uncomfortably where he stood.

Fandral stroked the skin on his hips appreciatively. “If you are always this well behaved I may be tempted to ask for your hand.”

Loki smirked and raised a brow.

“Yes, that would be too much to ask, would it not?” Calloused hands pushed him to the wardrobe space. They would fit in there, but it would be a snug fit.

“I have a bed.”

“I have noticed this, but if I know Thor right he will burst in any time now to talk sense into you and apologize for hitting you. Not necessarily in that order and probably not very eloquently.”

Loki grinned. “Would be a pity if he saw you buried balls deep in his baby brother, hm?”

Though, only a curtain covered the opening to the small space. It was not much of a hiding place.

“I have no wish to die today. Though if I must die I would prefer to have had one last good fuck first.”

Loki allowed himself to be positioned where the older man wanted him. He was facing the wall and Fandral was behind him, moving his limbs. Hands on the wall, legs wide.

He had not been taken in ages, he realized as nimble fingers worked to stretch him. It hurt a little when he was penetrated, but he liked the dull pain. It was nothing. He had been hurt worse with women in his bed. Long nails were murder.

“Take the binding off.”

“No, I want to show you something,” Fandral insisted.

Loki decided to play along, it could end up being interesting. “Alright.” Or he could just kill the older man for being annoying.

Fandral adjusted his grip on Loki's hips and started thrusting into him. It took four tries before he found an angle that made Loki moan wantonly, but once he had it figured out there was no reprieve.

He had never been a silent person in bed and it took an improvised gag to change that.

It was different. Loki was not sure he liked it better, but it was different. Having an orgasm with no input from his cock made things feel odd. Having another on the heels of that one was even more odd, so when the older man came inside him he liked the normality of it. Fandral being clingy and cuddling him while staying inside until his limp organ slipped out felt good, as long as the fool knew this changed _nothing_ between them.

Sex and love had little to do with each other in Loki's experience.

Fandral untied his genitals and they cleaned up quickly. Loki threw him out after that. He wanted to be alone to gather his thoughts for the short time he had before the feast started. He still felt sensitive and wired up. He would dress himself, since Fandral had been too busy to be helpful in that department.

 

* * *

 

The Midwinter Feast was a happy event because the darkest night would soon be past. Of course, Asgard being flat this detail was determined with magic eons ago so that the cycles and climate would mimic Vanaheim and Midgard. Frigga could, and sometimes did, change the weather, but all weather was a delicate chain reaction that had to be changed with care.

While eating and drinking were central parts in all celebrations on Asgard, during Midwinter the big draw was the stories told. The elderly would tell stories of glorious battles, enchanted items, or old legends no one knew the truth value of.

Loki settled down close to where the elders had gathered around a fire pit, they would not start yet for an hour, but he had always liked this part of the feast best. He did not much enjoy the food. Or food at all. He was incredibly picky and he was sure the kitchen staff hated him.

Except he had not been picky on Jotunheim. Loki frowned a little and sucked on his bottom lip. He had eaten what he had been given, and he had liked it. Even the bugs. Most of the foods he tolerated best were made up of plants grown in colder climates.

If he had not looked like an Aesir he would have assumed he only had Jotun blood in him.

“I do not suppose either of you can entertain me with a story that does not paint the Frost Giants as monsters?” Loki challenged.

“I hear you braved the cold and lived to tell the tale. There was a time when a woman ruled Jotunheim alone with no man by her side,” one of the elders said.

The other elders hummed and nodded. Loki settled more comfortably.

“It was a long, long time ago. She was crowned by the Dark Elves when all of Yggdrasil bowed to their rule. She was called Ice by us, and she ruled with the an iron fist. The Dark Elves were very pleased with her. Then their empire fell to dust, thanks to your grandfather. Ice continued to rule over her frozen land for three more millenniums before her death. She died of old age. No one dared lay a hand on her, she was a cruel and vicious woman and her people feared her more than they feared death itself.”

“Once dead, Jotunheim looked to her only child. Her son. The people there were confident he would be their salvation. There was to be a coronation, and invitations went out to all the other realms.”

The elder took a break to drink from a cup of mead.

“The Fire Giants, the Vanir and what was left of the Dark Elves all sent representatives to attend. They expected a young boy, an inexperienced youth they could whisper to and manipulate. What met them was a sorcerer, a man who had lived long enough to sire offspring of his own. He had been wandering the realms under the name Nal for many years.”

“The elves and giants quickly forged alliances with him. They saw him for what he was and correctly assumed that he was not someone they wanted to cross. The Vanir King at the time... well, he thought little of any giant and he held no love for the Frost Giants in particular. He insulted the new King. Nothing came of it for a long time. Then Asgard's new King, Odin, set his eyes on Vanaheim.”

“Vanaheim ordered, not asked mind you, ordered Jotunheim to come to its aid. Jotunheim sent troops led by their King. Not many, but skilled as far as the rumors went. They came just as the Vanir and the Aesir fought a battle, from behind the Vanir ranks. Thinking allies were coming to aid them the Vanir army did nothing to stop the Jotunheim soldiers from reaching their King.”

“Using magic the Jotun King transformed the Vanir King into a pig, and all the Vanir banners changed so that a pig was seen on them. The Aesir close by stopped fighting to laugh, for this was their enemy. This was the Vanir who they had been told to hate. The pig, still wearing the crown but now around its neck, was herded around by Aesir soldiers so that all could see the merry sight.”

“The Jotun King and his soldiers left, deserted the Vanir to their fate. Tyr, a young soldier at the time, ordered the pig to be served at the victory feast. When the feast ended people would find pieces of fingers and toes on the discarded plates. Since that day, the Vanir refuse to eat pig and they will never say a kind word about a Frost Giant.”

Loki raised an eyebrow.

“You do not believe me boy?” The elder chuckled.

“What happened to the Jotun King? Nal?”

“We know not. Some say his son took over his duties when he died. Some say he still lives.”

“We know one thing,” another elder pitched in, “the current King of Jotunheim is no mage.”

Loki laughed because they were wrong, but everyone gathered seemed to assume he was merely amused.

Perhaps just as well.

 

* * *

 

After his family had celebrated the holidays Loki went down to the city, to the heart of the poor district and spent a bit of gold on the merchants there. He bought seemingly random items – books, cloaks, fresh produce, a bit of fabric, spices.

Once done he went to visit the new orphanage. He did not want to be the kind of prince who ignored the commoners, and he knew winter was a difficult time for many.

The caretakers allowed him inside without a fuss. Most of the younger children were huddled up by the fire, while the older ones had chores. He always felt out of place in the poor district, in his fine clothes and armor while the commoners dressed in rags and patched clothes.

The good thing about the poor district, however, was that no one commented on how skinny Loki was. They were all worse off.

On Alfheim orphanages did not exist, there was no need for them when elves were willing to adopt anything younger than themselves. Before Asgard conquered Vanaheim the unwanted children had been given to temples and trained to become priests.

The building was still new, but the furniture had been moved from the old building and while everything was clean it was worn and torn. From the outside it looked impressive, but inside he could see only a few rooms with Asgard's typical high ceilings. It could have benefited from an second story, even if the ceiling was lower.

Loki placed his earlier purchases on the long table in the main room. Rich people often made the mistake of giving poor people too much, too expensive items, rather than something they could use without being robbed.

“I am unsure if I got enough cloaks,” he admitted. He had never been able to find any record in the palace of how many orphans there were.

The oldest caretaker, an old matron, smiled kindly. “Anything is better than nothing, Your Highness.”

 

 


	6. The Spring Treaty

The news that Laufey had finally agreed to negotiate a more relaxed stance between Asgard and Jotunheim was very welcome. Loki ran to Thor's rooms to tell him the news, that Odin had said that they were _finally going_ , and in his excitement he did not even notice the shapely girl next to his brother until he was almost on top of her.

“Thor! Get up! We are going to Jotunheim!” he yelled.

The girl got up, giving Loki a nice view of her smooth skin and firm curves. He smiled sheepishly at her while she dressed and fled. At least Thor had good taste.

“Thor!” Incoherent mumbling met him until he pushed his brother off the messy bed. “ _Thor_!”

“I am up!” Thor stumbled around and got dressed more on routine than conscious effort. “What is burning? Who has died? Are we under attack?”

“No, you oaf! Laufey is going to allow a discussion. We are going to Jotunheim to negotiate!”

Thor looked at him, incredulous. “This does not seem like something to get excited about so early in the day, brother.”

Loki sighed and flopped down on Thor's smelly bed. Ew. “Did you drink last night? This is only the most important diplomatic mission in centuries! Why would I be excited?”

Thor muttered something about insane brothers and inbred goats, Loki felt grateful he had not heard all of that. “We had a bit of a merry time last night. Spring is here and that merits a party, I thought.”

“Of course you did. Please take a bath. Thor, this is an important mission and it simply will not do to arrive smelling like whatever poorly bred barmaid that was. You will be King one day and after all those lessons you should be able to handle this.”

Thor groaned, but seemed to at least realize the truth in what Loki had said and went to wash. While he was away Loki had used magic to get himself clean again. There had been a time when he had attended all of Thor's many parties, but he found he did not like mindless drinking much. Nor was he of a mind that spending time drunk every other week made Asgard like him more. The business owners might smile to your face, but their eyes were never happy when Thor arrived with his entourage.

His brother was soon dressed and ready to leave, never one to linger in a bath the way Loki often did.

 

* * *

 

Odin and Frigga were giving them more warnings than usual while they all rode to the Bifrost. Loki ignored them for the most part. He longed to feel a real winter's chill. Thor was quiet because he was nervous. Frigga was making a big production of seeming worried. Odin was all about stern instructions. Loki felt out of place being so excited.

After some final instructions and reminders from their parents Heimdall activated the Bifrost and they were off.

It had taken until spring, about half a year, but finally Loki sat foot on Jotunheim's snowy ground again. It was dawn, or possibly dusk, a clear and sunny day at any rate, a beautiful time to visit. The snow sparkled like gems in the sunlight and the ice shone like polished crystals. He wanted to marvel at it longer, but unfortunately there were things to do that did not involve rolling around in the snow like an over-sized puppy.

Thor was shivering like a leaf until Loki took pity and cast a spell on him to keep him warm. Personally he felt almost revived in the chill. The air was fresh, not filled with pollen like on Asgard. It was truly glorious after he had been denied a proper winter that year.

Loki started walking and Thor followed suit. They soon heard the roar of a river further off to their right, out of sight, but obvious. Soon Thor was walking ahead of Loki, who was busy looking at everything.

A small number of Jotun guards trailed after Helblindi when the Jotun prince met them about halfway to the settlement. Loki was still excited and nearly bouncing. He grinned at Helblindi and took the lead from Thor.

“Well met, little princeling,” Helblindi greeted, clearly amused by Loki's enthusiasm. The guards seemed to find it funny as well.

“Well met, Prince Helblindi. I trust you remember my brother?”

“Of course. The _other_ son of Odin,” Helblindi muttered.

Thor looked equally displeased and Loki worried there was going to be an incident. He had heard Odin warn Thor about Helblindi's _unnatural_ interest in Loki. As if Loki was some maiden whose virtue needed to be guarded. If that was such an issue he should never have been exiled to Alfheim as soon as he misbehaved.

“Is your father joining us today?” he asked to move matters ahead.

“He is waiting, in fact.” Helblindi gave the guards a command and two of them took up the rear behind a very suspicious Thor. The giants walked slow, either aware of their shorter legs or in no rush.

“I am glad he allowed us to come,” Loki said.

“You really should come sometime when it is not official business.”

“I am afraid my parents are a little nervous about allowing me to go at all,” Loki sighed. He was fairly sure Helblindi would respect a no, but he was also fairly sure he would not say the word if they truly got the opportunity to be alone again. The elves always said that one can learn a lot from a species by fucking it, though Loki had always assumed they were half-joking.

Helblindi made a displeased noise. “And we took such care to get you back in one piece too. We could both have had such fun with you. Father has never been very difficult to... charm.”

Thor made a growling sort of noise when Helblindi stroked Loki's cheek, and by the look of the grin the giant sported it was a very deliberate move.

“Sensitive, that brother of yours,” Helblindi remarked without sparing a single glance Thor's way.

“Perhaps you should not antagonize me,” Thor warned.

“Fingers stiff yet?” Helblindi asked. “I need not hurt you myself Aesir, I could let the wind and the snow do the job for me. The realm does not offer pity, nor do we.”

“It is beautiful here when it catches the light,” Loki said pointedly, but he meant it. Jotunheim was pretty in its own way.

“Unnecessarily bright in daylight,” Helblindi said, “but yes, the ice can be a strikingly beautiful beast. Sharp toothed and dangerous, but a beauty.”

“Ah. I forgot. Sorry about keeping you awake during the day,” Loki said.

Helblindi stroked his hair, which caused another protest from Thor, but Loki liked the attention. He liked the openness of it, how there seemed to be no reason for a Frost Giant to hide what Asgard considered wrong. Though, to be fair, the elves hid nothing related to flirting either. If you had started puberty all you needed to do was agree when they asked.

They reached an entrance to the cave, and Loki wished he had more time to spend outside since the weather was so nice, but it was likely not to be. Helblindi and the guards led them to a room deep down in the cave system. It was much warmer down there, which was considerate. It still was not warm by Aesir standards, so Loki did not remove the spell from his brother.

There was a large stone table where Laufey and a handful other Frost Giants were already seated. Guards were posted all around the room, they had some type of symbol drawn over their chests in green paint. Loki grinned when he spotted the one who had proved to him that even they felt the cold.

“I thought I told you to come alone,” Laufey reprimanded Loki before he could talk to the guard. “You should listen to what your elders say, princeling.”

Helblindi took a free seat next to Laufey. They looked very similar to each other, which was only emphasized when they sat so close together. Almost like Helblindi was a younger copy of his father, with only a few differences between them.

“Alas, I must obey my parents before you,” Loki apologized.

“Do you?” Laufey asked with a wicked grin.

“Of course,” Loki lied, making no effort to hide the dishonesty in his voice.

The furniture was made for giants. Loki felt like a child, dwarfed by it as he was. Thor solved the height difference by standing on a stone chair. Loki nimbly jumped up on the same one and sat on the left armrest. It was more than big enough and did not look half as aggressive as standing up when the giants sat down. Thor looked at him funny.

“What?” Loki grinned. “You intend to stand for hours if need be?”

Thor sat down on the right armrest. Sometimes it was too easy to manipulate others.

A Jotun carried in a tray with what looked like fruit to the table and another handed out steaming cups. Thor refused to take one, but Loki took one with a polite smile. It was not the same tea from last time, it tasted more like the tea elves favored.

“Shall we talk then?” Laufey said with an upbeat voice. He rolled a fruit across the table to Loki. “What does Asgard want from Jotunheim?”

“Peace,” Thor said, as the Allfather no doubt had drilled into him. Loki refrained from rolling his eyes and instead investigated the fruit. It certainly smelled edible.

“This will be a short talk then, we already have peace,” Laufey said, a cruel smile on his lips while he glared at Thor.

“What my brother means,” Loki said, “is that we would like a less strained relationship with Jotunheim.”

“I have no interest in Asgard and the backward ways of the Aesir,” Laufey said with a smirk. “Why would we possibly want to interact?”

“We would like to trade,” Thor said.

“And what could you sell to us that we do not already possess?” Laufey asked.

“According to a dusty old accounting book I found we once sold you sugar and grains.” Loki was puzzled, it was too easy, Laufey was guiding the conversation. Why? What was he after? There was no doubt that Laufey was clever, but Loki did not understand his motives.

“Asgard _paid_ in sugar beets and various grains, technically, which we always sold on to Svartalfheim. I am willing to bet it is not listed what Asgard bought for its crops, but I will tell you. We have the only type of magic capable of creating lock gems. Though seeing as no one will want to give Bestla's bastard son any more power to hold over our heads... I am thinking we will stick to petty trinkets like pearls and ivory. Would you grant safe passage, if we sent merchants?”

Too easy.

“Father suggested trade be conducted at the palace at an appointed time and date,” Thor said, clearly not processing the magnitude of what had just been said. Nor did he seem to be suspicious of Laufey, only showing an obvious dislike. “That way the commoners will not be frightened and the guards could escort them to and from the Bifrost.”

“We have attempted that twice before to trade ivory,” Laufey muttered. “Most did not return alive, and that was years before the war.”

Loki frowned. Odin had failed to mention it, but that could be because Odin seemed to find a lot of similar details unimportant. He finally nibbled at the fruit, which was almost like a sweet melon without the hard peel. He had skipped breakfast as usual, and he suddenly found he was hungry.

“Perhaps if we could bring our own soldiers we would find this more appealing,” Helblindi said cautiously.

“Father does not want large parties,” Thor said.

“It would hardly make much of a difference,” Loki argued. “Besides, the merchants father summoned wanted to bring guards of their own. If everybody wants guards then we essentially agree with each other.”

Thor mulled it over. “I suppose.”

“Can we back up to the fact that Odin would give his remaining eye for a lock gem?” Loki said quietly.

“What type of gem is it?” Thor asked with little interest.

“It is not a gem in the true sense of the word, but a magical container. One mage creates that, another fills it with a purpose, a power. Ever wonder how those staffs are made? Or that hammer of yours? Ever heard of Infinity Stones?” Loki tried to explain it as simply as he could. “The important part is that without a lock gem there can be no new magical weapons made.”

Thor nodded. Loki supposed he understood enough.

“We could be convinced to trade one for the littlest prince. My son could use something to play with,” Laufey leered at Thor.

“My brother is not a thing to be traded or sold, and he is certainly no whore. Watch how you speak, Jotun,” Thor said darkly.

“Have you stopped your habit of arranging marriages, then?” Laufey asked, feigning innocence now.

“It is a very good offer,” Loki told Thor, not entirely opposed to the idea. “Mother would love to arrange a wedding.”

“I will not hear any more of this,” Thor said.

Loki rolled his eyes. “So, pearls and ivory?” Loki asked, knowing that there were Aesir and Vanir merchants willing to trade such things even if they had to barter with a Jotun. Monsters or no, Jotunheim's pearls were worth more than gold. “What would your merchants trade for?”

“There is very little that interest us on Asgard,” Laufey said.

Loki shrugged. “You are under a trade blockade, even if Asgard has nothing that catches your fancy we also lord over Vanaheim, Alfheim and to an extent Midgard,” he said bluntly.

“And Odin wants to add us to his little collection,” Laufey said instead of being helpful and answering a simple question. He was drawing it out, Loki was sure, but he could not think of a reason why. He had sped things up earlier. What did he want?

“Yes,” Loki said before Thor could deny it. “I imagine that would be part of the plan, but I doubt he would waste resources on subjugating such a large realm.”

“The Light Elves would have more objects of interest than Aesir or Vanir,” Helblindi supplied.

Loki nodded. “Thank you, that is very helpful.” Conveniently, the elves would also be more interested in trading with Frost Giants than the Vanir. The Vanir positively loathed giants.

Laufey grinned, but muttered “insolent brat” under his breath.

“We agree, then?” Thor asked.

“You send merchants here and we send merchants to Asgard. If all goes well we will attempt to agree on other things,” Laufey said as he stood to his full height, taller even than the other Frost Giants. “I have things to attend to.”

“Will your son be free to introduce some of the merchants to us?” Loki asked. He was simply fishing for more time on the realm, but meeting the merchants would have benefits to their mission.

Laufey turned to Helblindi and said something in his native language, which Loki made a point to memorize. To his obvious surprise Helblindi argued the order with a quick gesture towards Loki. Laufey snarled something, and Loki could tell he had pulled rank from the look on Helblindi's face. Helblindi rarely showed emotions, he was a serene mask for the most part.

The other Frost Giants in the room looked uncomfortable, and Thor looked between them all with trepidation. Loki met his eyes and shook his head. There would be no blood spilt if he could help it.

“We will summon some for next time, they live far from here,” Helblindi said politely when Laufey had left. He looked towards Thor, but not directly at him. “It is time for you to leave, Aesir. _Now_.”

They were quickly herded by guards to the area where Heimdall had transported them, the runes of the Bifrost had been scorched into the rock beneath the snow. It was done to mark the area so that it could be used again.

Loki felt the air crackle with magic before several portals opened above them. He saw giant flying creatures approach. Shrill screams pierced the frozen air in the dozens, and it drew giants out from the cave openings in great numbers. They looked like they expected good news. He felt something, a soft, warm feeling that wanted to pull him away from the Bifrost runes. “What are those?” he asked.

“The Queen's Guard. Mother is returning. Tell you gatekeeper to collect you. _Now_. Father must talk to her, or she will kill all Aesir on sight.”

Thor did not need to be told more, he called for Heimdall.

“Farewell for now then,” Loki said reluctantly. He did not want to leave. That soft pull felt -

Helblindi's hands abruptly landed on his shoulders. “Go, princeling, and do not worry. She will see reason later.”

Loki was still reluctant to leave, every instinct he had told him to stay, to follow the pull, but when Helblindi released him Thor dragged him to the circular rune mark on the ground. Heimdall was quick to collect them with the Bifrost, and once they were back on Asgard he seemed worried for them. Loki winced at a sudden pain and rubbed his chest.

“That must be one vicious woman,” Thor commented.

Irritated, Loki wanted to snap that she had lost her children, but instead he walked up to Odin. “Helblindi and Laufey said something in their language.” He repeated, as best he could recall, the sounds Laufey had made. “What does that mean?”

“' _Bring them before the Queen_ ',” Odin translated.

Loki repeated what Helblindi had said next. Odin faltered, but Heimdall spoke up, “The first part means ' _she will slaughter him and eat his flesh_ ' and the second part means something like ' _we would lose the second_ ' I believe. You are not pronouncing it correctly, so I cannot be sure. It has been quite a while since I used the language. The Allspeak does not work on it?”

Loki shook his head and absently rubbed at his chest again.

Thor stiffened. “He pointed to you, Loki. Why would they want to toss you to the wolves?”

Loki frowned. It made no sense. “I do not know. Laufey said something else before he left.” He repeated what Laufey had snarled.

“The sounds are mangled. ' _She can have him_ ', the last sound I assume is their word for ' _obey_ ',” Heimdall translated.

“Does your chest hurt? I think it would be best if you stayed here in the future Loki,” Frigga spoke up. Ever the caring mother.

“Too much travel with the Bifrost,” Loki lied smoothly. He had never reacted well to it so it was believable. As if on cue he sneezed. “Say what you will, but there was no _pollen_ on Jotunheim. Helblindi disregarded a direct order to get us home safe,” Loki muttered as he rubbed his nose. “He said the Queen would be more reasonable later, after speaking to Laufey.”

However, if Laufey was willing to sacrifice them in order to appease her... was Helblindi merely easing their worries? Why? Or did they in fact say something entirely different? Had he really pointed to Loki and not Thor? Why did Laufey keep referring to Odin as a bastard? Sure, insults were likely, but it seemed more like he was just stating the obvious.

Asking Odin may very well get Loki beheaded, so he kept his mouth shut.

“Why is Helblindi not the King?” Thor asked. “Was he not when we were there last?”

“Not really. Laufey lets him do the duties occasionally. Just like father allows us to help with certain aspects of ruling the realm.” Loki sneezed again when a wind brought a dusty cloud of yellow pollen, and sighed. “Before all... that, we agreed on trading. Their merchants will come with guards and ours will be allowed to bring a small number as well. The Jotuns are willing to trade pearls and ivory, Helblindi mentioned elven goods would be more interesting to them. The elves would be much more willing to trade with Jotun merchants anyway.”

Odin nodded. “This is good. You both did well, all things considered.”

Loki did not feel like they had done well. He had wanted to stay longer, and he would have preferred to be there on friendlier terms. “We must have messed up somehow,” he said.

“Do not underestimate how tricky Laufey can be,” Heimdall warned. “He is every bit the trickster you are. It would not be beneath him to try to scare us so we do not ask for things he is not willing to give us.”

Loki cursed. Of course, bringing up lock gems had probably been unwise of him. “Yes, I think you could be right there.”

“The gems?” Thor guessed.

“Gems?” Frigga asked cautiously, the glint in her eyes saying she knew very well what kind.

“Lock gems. I brought up that we had sold sugar and grains and Laufey corrected me saying that was what we had paid in.”

“That must have been ages ago,” Frigga mused. “I hear they dislike both because it makes them sick to eat it.”

“The records certainly were not written recently,” Loki agreed, but silently wondered why Laufey would accept a payment that he would only pass on to the Dark Elves. They had suffered through a long civil war, and they were all but broke when Alflyse was crowned some centuries before Loki's birth. How could they have paid Laufey? “Though you missed an opportunity to get one.”

“I will not sell you to some monster, no matter the payment,” Thor proclaimed.

“Best marriage offer I have had so far,” Loki shrugged and winked at Thor who glared at his jest. “Oh come now, he is not so horrible as you make him out to be. He is by far the most reasonable of them.”

“They are beasts,” Thor said. “You should not joke about being bound to one.”

 

 


	7. Dreams Of The Freezing Cold

Loki felt like his insides were cooked, or possibly charred.

“Put him on the floor,” Frigga ordered crisply.

The approach of summer brought the unrelenting heat of the sun which all Aesir enjoyed so much. With one notable exception. Loki knew he had spent too much time outside when he woke up to two guards dumping him on the stone floor in his rooms. Loki rather liked the cold stone at that moment, even though his dry skin complained about any weight put on it.

“Place the Casket next to him. Then leave.”

“Mother?” Loki croaked weakly, worried what she was up to.

“Relax, my son. Healer Eir suggested it the first time. We did it more often when you were younger. It is not cold enough to hurt you.”

He would have remembered that on another day, when it was not too hot to think. He would have remembered strange voices. How the Casket was disconcerting and alien and made him feel strange.

Two other guards did as they had been told without hesitation and then all four of them promptly left with Frigga. The closing of the door seemed ominous and loud. Loki was too dizzy to be aware of much, but he heard a distant voice singing in an alien language. The Casket was cold, but it was a nice type of cold. He had no way of knowing how long he spent curled around it like a baby around a stuffed toy, he thought perhaps hours, but there was no way to know for sure.

 

* * *

 

At first when he woke up he saw double, his blurred vision making his skin seem like a mist before being solid again as he came to his senses more. There was a fine layer of frost on the floor and walls around him. His clothes were stiff because they were frozen solid.

He hummed a song he had no memory of hearing before, even if he also for some strange reason knew it by heart. The Casket's magic licked at him from all sides, cold and alien and strangely comforting.

He remembered suddenly, that Laufey had said that the Casket's purpose was not to make ice. It was something to ponder while he traced the runes carved into the swirling designs, the strange runes he had asked father about once and been told they were too old to be translated. Whatever language it was, it was either long gone or one Odin did not approve of.

The singing had stopped, he realized. The voices in the Casket were never content to do one thing only – they talked, sang songs, whispered, cried, and sometimes they called his name. They did not do that now, but when he had been younger they had often did that, and he had found it creepy and scary when it happened. Eir had once claimed that the first time she placed Loki by the Casket he had screamed for his mother.

He thought he remembered Frigga being on Alfheim to visit her brother.

Father had been furious that Eir had used the Casket, but she was a fiery old lady and she had argued her case while Loki had drifted in and out of consciousness.

Now that he was older he knew better than to scream for his mother, whatever magic that resided in the Casket protected him, but it lashed out at anyone who approached. The blue glow from within was the same color of the magic that had once killed two guards. They had crumbled, their skin black and necrotic, their bodies stiff from the cold.

He knew they would not come into his rooms now, not while he was recovering. It would be his job to return the Casket to the Vault and place it on its pedestal.

 

* * *

 

Loki woke again, unaware of when he had fallen asleep. The room was dark, the night air flowed inside, too warm and too thick with smells that itched in his nose even if the cold still surrounded him like a blanket.

The singing was back, soft and ethereal.

He rose up from the floor, testing his strength. When he only felt mildly dizzy he removed his clothes and went to the next room where water and food was set out. The food he summarily ignored since it was days old, but the water he drank quickly before he returned to where the Casket was.

The closer he was to it, the louder the singing got.

He wondered how father would react to this latest bout of illness and decided he would go to Alfheim instead of finding out. The usual disapproval was always hard to bear, it was hardly like he became ill on purpose. He had just misjudged the heat slightly.

After some more sleep – and an incident in the bath where he nearly slept underwater – Loki felt better.

 

* * *

 

Loki approached Heimdall.

“I see Alfheim is the destination,” Heimdall commented when he saw how Loki was dressed.

“It is. I thought I would let you know, since I have no plan on using the Bifrost.” He much preferred a more anonymous entrance – when the Bifrost slammed down on a realm everyone knew Asgard was about to meddle. He also preferred a method of travel that did not leave him feeling like he had been struck by Mjolnir and then stepped on by giants.

Heimdall nodded once. “As usual, then.”

 

* * *

 

The portal Loki favored took him into the middle of a forest. The wildlife was harmless – unless you slept on the ground – and there were few locals. The lush forest was full of tall oak trees and smaller fruit trees. He could teleport shorter distances, but the sky was a dark gray and a soft rain fell which made the air cooler. He could manage the walk just fine in these conditions.

Loki found his magic teacher outside her small cottage, tending her small garden where she grew everything from medicinal herbs to food. It was the only building around for half a day's walk.

“I see my apprentice has returned,” she greeted. “Any news of the world?”

“I was in Jotunheim!” Loki exclaimed. “Several times.”

She frowned. “Not causing trouble, I hope?”

“No Frida, well, kind of at first. Thor took me out for my birthday, and we spotted Frost Giants. There was a portal, and Thor rushed to follow them so I followed him and we ended up on Jotunheim. Entirely the wrong day to visit, as it turned out, but we were not attacked and we nearly had everything solved before father came.”

“Autumn? Must have been midwinter there.”

“It was _terribly_ cold,” Loki nodded. “I had suggested we seal the portal on both realms, so they kept me so I could watch and -”

“What?”

“Well, King Laufey's oldest said Odin would never believe -”

“No, stop, Jotunheim willingly did what an Aesir suggested?”

“Yes?”

She looked genuinely shocked. “Well, that is an oddity. Alright, go on.”

“I was to stay until they had sealed the portal, so King Laufey asked me to come to this ceremony they have for their dead children. I thought he would slit my throat.”

“Odder still. Not the last part. They are very private about their grief, especially the... children.”

“You knew of this? Not one of our teachers on Asgard mentioned anything.”

“I have heard of it. Family is everything to them, more so than to us even, and what Asgard did was perhaps the cruelest thing they could have ever done.”

Loki nodded. “They were nicer than I think I perhaps deserved. The crown prince showed me around and they let me eat with them. We were there again recently on a diplomatic mission, Thor and me, and got a verbal agreement on trade.”

“Sounds like you have something to be proud of then.”

Loki shook his head. “I would like to think so... but... father does not seem to think anything I do is something to be proud of.”

She patted his shoulder. “Come on, go inside and start boiling some water. I was going to make soup for dinner. You look like you took ill recently, you could use something in you.”

 

* * *

 

Frida brought him tea that evening, when he was looking at the stars that were visible through the tree crowns.

“Do you know much about Frost Giants?” Loki asked.

Frida drank from her own mug before she answered. “I know enough not to call them that.”

“Oh. What should one call them? I think I like them, but on Asgard all I hear is monster this and monster that.”

“We say Jotuns, refering to Jotunheim, but they call themselves Ymir's Children or some such. Aesir use Vanir as whores and cheap labor, they have us elves produce them pretty things for free, of course they call them names. I expect you to know better, though.”

Loki smiled bitterly into his tea. “I may know better, but I am a coward who says nothing.”

“You will be of no use to anyone dead.”

“Yes, well... I feel like I am a coward. Anyway, I wanted to ask you because I get no straight answers. Asgard's information is either simplistic, faulty or downright demeaning.”

Frida shrugged. “You know I hail from what is now called Svartalfheim, and that I worked as a court mage until Malekith took over. I had very little to do with foreigners. We had the most wonderful library, one could be in there for days and nights and still have plenty to read no matter how specialized the subject. Jotuns are deceptive by nature. They pretend to be dumb, stab foreigners in the back, that kind of thing. They distrust outsiders. They are also very sweet, and very kind, but they are peculiar about their likes and dislikes. They all have elemental magic in them.”

“Ice.”

“No, water. Frost is a misnomer. Giant is true in most cases, certainly compared to elves. Fire Giant is another misnomer, as they are very closely related and have the same elemental affinity. Muspelheim is warmer than Jotunheim, but the only fire there comes from the many volcanoes.”

Frida fiddled with her mug. “When I left court, the Jotuns had been united under Ice. She was backed by the Emperor, but the Jotuns rebelled constantly. I never liked Ice when she visited court, and I was not very impressed by the children she sent to be trained by our tutors. Laufey was a spoiled prince who became a shortsighted King. If he had succeeded anyone other than that tyrant he would not have been hailed as such an improvement.”

“He succeeded Ice?” Loki asked.“ So, he used to be Nal?”

“Yes. Have you heard the story of the pig?” Frida asked.

Loki nodded.

“Looking at it as a story, it is funny. As politics? I can agree that the Vanir should not have insulted him, I think we can all agree that it was in poor taste. However, sometimes it is glossed over how poorly prepared the Vanir where when Asgard attacked. Laufey could have turned the tide, he could have killed the Vanir King or merely humiliated him as he did, but the Vanir will never forgive Jotunheim for leaving them at the mercy of the Aesir. Laufey could have won them the battle and left.”

“You are saying he should have helped them regardless of what he did to their King?” Loki drank the last of his tea. “Perhaps.”

“If he had, Alfheim would not have fallen. It was the combined forces of the Vanir and Aesir that made it possible for them to win. If he had... Asgard would never have meddled so much, and the war with Jotunheim likely would not have occurred either. A small decision, but even a small decision can have large repercussions.”

“Is the spell difficult?”

“I thought we were going to focus on illusions and illusion doppelgangers?” Frida asked.

“Yes, but I am curious.”

“It _is_ very difficult, as it happens. Nal surpassed many of the mages at court and he is very skilled. Laufey is a king, but he still goes by Nal at times. I have seen him in Ljosalfgard's library, but we never speak. I doubt he knows I hail from Svartalfheim.”

“Aren't Jotuns forbidden to travel?”

“A simpler version of that spell, Loki, is to change ones own shape. You have made some headway there if I recall correctly.”

Loki nodded. “Yes.”

“You said you liked them.”

Loki shrugged.

“They are sweet, like I said, if you treat them well. Or if they see you as a child, which I think is the case with you. No offense, but small, meek and underfed as you are they likely reacted on instinct. They live in family units and unlike Aesir they expect men to help with young children.” Frida smirked. “If you think we elves have loose morals, try bedding a Jotun. Odds are they will agree to a tumble. They don't much mind incest, nor do they mind other species for such activities.”

Loki scoffed. “If they are proportionate, that will be how I die...”

“Then again, you do not need to be on the receiving end.”

“Odin seemed concerned out one of them touching me... that frostbite thing?” Loki sighed. “But, I did not tell him they did touch me and nothing happened. It was all very brief anyway.”

Frida looked curiously at him. “Nothing happened?”

“Not that I noticed?”

Frida nodded. “Have you met Farbauti?”

Loki shook his head. “Just Laufey and Helblindi mostly.”

Frida waved a hand through the air and an image appeared of one of those flying beasts and a young girl. “If I am to hazard a guess about your heritage, you will be related to her somehow. Her father was one of Malekith's bastards. He was killed not too long ago. He sired a lot of children.”

 

 


	8. A Cold Touch Of Summer

Loki sat on a war horse, waiting on Odin's left side while Thor was on his right. It was supposed give them a little extra height, enough to not seem so small and frail compared to the giants. They were going to escort the delegation from Jotunheim from the Bifrost to the palace.

After Thor had made several fruitless trips to Jotunheim alone over a months time, the involved parties had all agreed to host the next meeting in Asgard. He was not there to hear it in person, in fact after that first meeting Loki had been repeatedly told to stay out of it by both his parents, but Thor told him in great detail and with a lot of exasperated gestures of how poorly their talks were going. Loki's absence was probably why they were at a standstill and mostly managed to trade insults. It was not that he thought himself a miracle worker, it was that he knew Thor to be utterly useless at diplomacy. Even Odin was fed up, though he hid it well. Therefore, this meeting was scheduled to be between Odin, Thor, Laufey and someone who was presumably an advisor to Laufey.

The Einherjar guards shifted nervously about when the Bifrosts shimmering light brought six Frost Giants and a pack animal to the bridge just outside the observatory. It was the same as when Aesir troops were brought back in large numbers, and Loki wondered why there were not more. Two guards was nowhere near enough to protect a king on foreign soil.

Odin had no less than eight Einherjar nearby at all times.

Laufey and the other giants looked ridiculously large even in contrast to the bloated and excessive architecture of Asgard.

Odin and Laufey gave each other a stiff nod in greeting, Loki smiled politely and Thor glared. One of the merchants seemed curious about the crystal bridge and bent down to take a closer look, which was a common thing for people to do on their first visit.

“Follow us,” Odin said before taking the lead. Some of the Einherjar brought up the rear as their procession started moving. Thor rode beside their father, but Loki fell back a little.

The merchants wore different clothes than the standard kilt Loki had come to associate with the Jotuns. They had colorful coats that reached their ankles and their feet were wrapped in sturdy boots made from animal pelts. Bone jewelry was pierced through their lips, ears and noses. It was more like the pictures he was used to see of Jotuns.

“Are they from a different tribe?” Loki asked Laufey with a nod to the merchants.

“Our merchants dress that way to distinguish and announce themselves. It makes it easy to spot one across the tundra,” Laufey explained. “And yes, these are members of the southern hunting tribe. My wife is from that area. The stupid looking one is my wife's brother.”

Loki immediately identified him, not because he looked particularly stupid, but because he hissed something that sounded like an insult at Laufey.

Odin sighed ahead of them. “One would think you were too old for such petty displays.”

“I spoke to your mother,” Laufey told Odin, full of malice and clearly taking the reprimand as a challenge. “She said she could not bear to look at you for more than a year before tossing you out.”

The other giants all groaned, while Odin glared back at the Jotun King.

“Would you please shut up before you doom us all,” Laufey's brother-in-law hissed.

Laufey slapped the merchant over the head. “Brat.”

“Brutes,” Loki complained.

“Ah yes, the brutish Frost Giants who eat children,” Laufey mocked. He quickly looked to Odin and Thor to make sure they were not paying attention before he deftly plucked Loki off his horse and tossed him onto the large animal that carried the merchant's goods. “I think we will have you for lunch, little princeling. I am feeling peckish.”

Loki nearly fell off before he steadied himself and settled on the broad neck of the powerful animal, he could just barely straddle it. Whatever beast it was, having something land on its back did not phase it in the least. It did not even grunt, just sniffed the air a bit before losing all interest. Some of the guards reacted much more, so Loki put a hand up, telling them to keep their positions with hand signals.

He petted the beasts broad head before he leaned down on it rather than sit up. He had not slept enough for a good while because of the constant heat and he was tired.

“Maybe you should turn me into a pig,” Loki said quietly. “Might taste better that way.”

Laufey smirked. “You have no crown, where would the fun in that be? The whole point was to make them eat their king.”

“Did they?”

“The invaders, not the subjects sadly,” Laufey's brother-in-law supplied with a bit of a pout.

“The pink ones are daft,” Laufey hummed, deep voice rumbling. Loki idly mused that despite the insult it was a soothing voice. He had found Odin soothing as a child, until Loki's turbulent mood during adolescence had made it far more common for them to fight than get along. The phrase 'he was such an obedient child' had been commonly spoken during those years.

“What are these called?” Loki asked and patted the beast's head to show what he meant. It had fluffy fur, but did not walk like a horse did.

“Beds, apparently,” Laufey snorted. He looked toward Odin and Thor again, like a child not willing to get caught, then cast a spell to turn Loki's horse into a small fluffy bunny. He picked the animal up and petted it gently.

“Bear,” Laufey's brother-in-law said with a resigned look on his face. He seemed pretty much done with Laufey and his antics, but also like he had realized there was no escape or easy cure. “Our native species is bred to be milder in temper since we have no other animals that can easily be used to carry goods.”

“Bears as pack mules? Well then.” Loki scratched behind a rounded ear and got a pleased huff from the animal.

They had just cleared the bridge and were entering the city proper. Commoners came to gawk, but the rest of the trip to the palace was uneventful. Before they reached the palace Laufey handed Loki the bunny.

“What am I to do with this?” Loki asked in amusement.

“It is much fluffier that way,” Laufey grinned.

Odin turned then and pinned Loki with a stare. “What are you doing now, Loki?”

“Discussing bunnies,” Loki said and held the thing up.

Odin turned around again while shaking his head. “I'm sure you have duties to attend to.”

Loki was not going to enlighten Odin on the fact that no, he did not. He briefly contemplated walking off to the library in order to not be tempted to eavesdrop on the meeting that would follow, but decided to stick to the merchants instead. It was the next best thing, after all.

The hall the merchants had been granted was smaller than the throne room, but big enough that it seemed deserted with just a handful of Frost Giants, a sleeping bear, and Loki. And a hyperactive bunny. The former horse was agitated, and agitated horses tended to run around aimlessly.

The ones who came to trade were mainly other merchants. The Jotuns traded for items where they could. They were not amused by gold or other metals, instead they seemed to favor well-made fabrics, elven wine and certain spices.

The Warriors Three came by to skulk in a corner for a while and then leave when they saw the Jotuns were being civil.

“Curious children get eaten,” one of the guards commented as soon as the warriors had left.

“ _What_?” Loki asked.

“Once there was a Queen who felt her children were not clever enough to succeed her. She had many men to entertain her – including some of her sons – but the children were never as she hoped. So she had them fight and the winner lived while the others became cooked and eaten. This was of course unpopular among the children who survived. They tried to kill her using posion. The Queen became nearly blind, but she lived and soon killed the responsible ones. She kept having children. She had a child by one of her own sons, and because she felt the baby boy reminded her of the father, she gave him the babe as a present. Her son hid the babe in the palace. Other men who had children with the Queen did the same thing, but most of the children were curious, and she found them and ate them.”

“I hope that is not a bedtime story.”

“Only if the child has been naughty.”

“I get spices, but why the fabrics?” Loki asked, deciding to never ask for stories from Jotunheim. Cannibalism was not his favored thing to think about before bed.

The merchants smiled patiently. “We were told by the Queen to get her certain items. There is little on Asgard we truly need, and she told us not to ask for things that might rouse suspicion either.”

“Is she kind? To her own people, I mean? I get that she might not like us Aesir too much...”

“Very. You must remember that Jotunheim is not Asgard. If we did not like her, we would overthrow her. The same goes for Laufey, he is a better ruler than we have had in ages.”

The bunny, formerly a war horse, shook violently before transforming back into a horse. It seemed confused by the change in perception but no worse for the wear.

“I had better get that to the stables,” Loki said with a wave goodbye to the merchants. “Try to not eat any children!”

“Try not to fuck any horses!”

Loki made a rude gesture while they snickered and laughed, because really? Thor tells one false story in a dingy tavern in Vanaheim and it manages to travel all over the nine realms, including the one realm with no active contact with neither Aesir nor Vanir.

“Uncivilized brutes,” Loki huffed.

 

* * *

 

He was not sure why, but he liked the somewhat sullen and moody Jotun King. He found the Frost Giants in general fascinating, if somewhat morbid and entirely too outspoken, but he felt a sort of connection with Laufey and Helblindi what he did not fully understand. They, in turn, seemed to like him to a degree as well.

Which was probably why he was headed to the quarters assigned to the Jotun delegation late at night. They were nocturnal, they should be awake, and he certainly could not find sleep. The room set aside for the Frost Giants was a large open room. The fireplace was lit with magic, a chill emanating from it instead of warmth. He considered copying that when the summer heat got worse. It was rather appalling that he had never even considered using magic to chill his own rooms with how much he detested heat. Loki found Laufey reading a book and the advisor asleep. Or at least laying down and not paying attention. The merchants and guards were nowhere to be seen.

“Well, if it is not the little bastard prince,” Laufey rumbled without looking up from his book. The insults, Loki had realized, were not to be taken seriously. It made him curious about what had happened when he and Thor last had been to Jotunheim. Laufey seemed to have no active interest in hurting him. Perhaps Odin and Heimdall had translated incorrectly.

“Well met, King of Monsters,” Loki countered with mock respect, lingering in the doorway. “Did you send the merchants back?”

“They sent themselves back, they sold their wares and off they went,” Laufey said much more dramatically than the topic demanded. He waved for Loki to approach.

“Pity the bear left with them. Cozy beast,” Loki said instead of asking if Laufey had ever considered a career in the traveling circus. He walked closer, not in the least worried about being alone with a monster. Not much, anyway.

“Why are you not present at our negotiations?” Laufey asked with suspicious curiosity. “I like you.”

“They worry your Queen will eat me.” Loki grimaced. “Frankly, I worry she will eat me.”

“Your father is unusually worried we will hurt you, but seems to care little otherwise for you.” Laufey put the book down. “It makes me suspect something is hidden under the royal rug.”

Loki shrugged. “He is worried one of you will touch me. Supposedly because of that frostbite thing. I am more delicate than Thor, apparently,” Loki said with a roll of his eyes.

“We choose to inflict that,” Laufey said with a casual shrug. “I swatted Thor earlier when he insulted my family heritage and Odin did not bat an eye, or if he did it was the one he keeps covered. So what is so special about you, spoiled brat? Does he want you for a virgin sacrifice? Not to mention... I do believe I _have_ touched you...”

“He would be a few years late if he wanted me a virgin.” He did not comment on the touching, they both knew what had happened.

Loki flinched when Laufey reached out and cupped his face, more worried about the giant's strength than the chill. When it did not hurt he relaxed, the giant's skin was cool but not freezing and much softer than he had assumed. The size difference between them was ridiculous. He felt like a small child. Laufey was sitting down but he was still impressively tall.

“I can see why,” Laufey muttered, slowly stroking Loki's cheekbone with a thumb. “There is a spell on you.”

“I use magic. I have plenty of spells on me, _you_ would understand that,” Loki spoke quietly, not willing to break away from the gentle touch. It was pathetic how eager he was for affection of any kind.

Jotuns never smelled as strongly as most Aesir did. They had a softer smell of something earthy or like a wet forest, something natural. Then again, Loki was probably the only Aesir who bathed daily.

“Not this one, this one is Odin's. I recognize how his magic feels all too well. Old one, you may have had it on your whole life. It certainly explains the touching.”

“What does that have to do with touching?” Loki asked, perplexed. He licked his lips because there was a soft tingling after Laufey had swiped the pad of a thumb over them.

“Jotun magic often cancel out Aesir magic, me touching you negates the spell temporarily. He must have accounted for it and strengthened it, but two of us is too much for it.”

Common knowledge. Loki had been warned about it. “Two of you?”

Laufey placed his free hand on his and held it up so Loki could see. His hand was turning blue. Loki instantly pulled it back and Laufey let him, but the hand on Loki's face stayed. Skin changing color was not normal, but Loki could tell Laufey was not using magic to bring the change about. It would otherwise have been his first assumption. Loki took a calming breath and put his hand on Laufey, watching in a kind of horrified fascination as the blue crawled over his skin. In it, and deeper. He pulled away completely when he felt more changes start.

“Do not take it personally if I run away screaming.” It would be just his luck if he was the one responsible for permanently severing the ties between the two realms by running off screaming about monsters.

Laufey indicated the stone floor in front of him. Not sure why Loki sat down as well. He wanted to run away screaming. He did not like the conclusions his brain was throwing around. He could not be a Jotun. He just could not be a monster. He was not Odin's son. Whose was he? Surely not some warrior's, like he had always assumed, unless he was a half-blood.

“Do not tell Odin you know,” Laufey murmured.

“That would be accurate, because clearly I know _nothing_ about _anything_.”

“He took you from Jotunheim for a purpose. If he has lost hope of using you the way he originally intended, then you are probably much safer,” Laufey said quietly, but he could just as well have screamed.

Loki nodded because he had heard, not because he understood. He tried very hard not to understand. His head was spinning and his heart was feeling betrayed. He touched his own skin, thankfully the blue had receded, watching the pale color and trying to see the spell.

“You should be able to switch back to that shape if I break the spell,” Laufey mused. “You have held it long enough that it should be easy.”

Loki held his hands up in the air. “I am not sure I want you to.”

“It is not healthy to be trapped in a shape that is not your own. You can hold that shape on your own all you want, but do not allow someone else to confine you.”

Loki, of course, knew this. He was a trained mage, even if he knew he needed more experience to match most of the others in the realms. He had been taught to shapeshift and he had been taught the risks of staying in one alien shape for too long. “Still, if I have been like this for centuries...”

“It is just you and me,” Laufey coaxed calmly. “You would only have to worry about your own reaction. _I_ will not freak out.”

“Alright,” Loki said meekly. Now that he felt the spell himself it was like a layer of steel on his skin, and it felt incredibly restricting. He stripped his own spells himself. “I have taken the others down,” he said reluctantly.

The spell broke smoothly when Laufey drew a rune in the air between them, again using very visible magic. It was the aftermath that made Loki truly uncomfortable, it felt like he was weightless at first. The spell had not only affected his skin, but his whole body. He felt as if he had tensed a muscle for too long and then relaxed it. It was relief, but felt odd and almost painful.

Laufey did nothing but sit there while Loki restlessly rose up and stumbled about to find his balance in his _Jotun_ form, blue and monstrous. No wonder Odin had hidden it away. Once he started idly scratching at his skin Laufey was towering over him and grabbing his wrists to stop him, but there was no reprimand. It was not even a harsh grip, merely a hold to stop him from using his... _claws_... on his own skin.

His mind showed him the dead Jotun children, and he viciously shoved the thought away. He was not stupid. He knew that was his birthday, the entire reason Thor had stolen him away, and he knew he was a foundling. If he was Jotun, then he wanted no thoughts about how he might have siblings frozen in the ice of a long destroyed temple.

He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. He was taller than he normally was, he noticed absently, but still shorter than Laufey and much slimmer. He did not look malnourished in Aesir form, merely thin, but he looked positively starved now.

“You need to eat more,” Laufey muttered in a displeased voice. “Even hidden in a different form, your body needs more food than you are eating now.”

Loki laughed hollowly. “I need to drink more, preferably something alcoholic and right now.”

“You are not that different,” Laufey chuckled in that rumbling way giants did, “you still look like yourself.”

“Except that I am _blue_.”

“More grayish really. I consider that an improvement, that pink looks weird to me,” Laufey said, and pulled him into a hug, one hand carding through Loki's hair to calm him. He stiffened for a long while before relaxing and accepting the hug. He did need one. He was not so sure about the shushing noises Laufey made. He was not a child. Parents had always intrigued Loki, even so. Even if they were not taking care of their own child they always knew what to do.

Loki did not feel comfortable ranting about monsters, even though he wanted to. Laufey was no monster, not if his first instinct was to comfort, so Loki was probably not one either. He was still in control. He was just a different species than he had been told he was. The lie hurt more than the truth. He could have dealt with the truth easier if it had come from his parents early on. The fact that they had lied was bothering him. How many knew? Was he the only one who did not know?

“Why would they have lied for so long?” Loki muttered bitterly to himself, the sound muffled because he had his face buried in Laufey's chest.

“Have they? Or have they simply not told you everything?” Laufey was rubbing patterns on his back and it was relaxing. Loki realized he was probably following the lines that crisscrossed his skin, lines he had seen on all Jotuns. They were raised like welts, but too smooth to be scars. Magic perhaps, they were much too symmetrical to be natural.

The whole situation reminded him of how he had talked about his adolescent woes with Sif's mother rather than his own. There had still been that motherly vibe, but Sif's mother had felt no obligation to tell Odin. There was certainly nothing motherly about Laufey.

“Same thing,” Loki mumbled. Being hugged and shushed by someone his father hated. It was slightly absurd, but soothing all the same, and a little sobering to notice that not all fathers were like his. Odin certainly never hugged Loki. “Am I a half-blood?”

“No. You have elven blood in you, but you are pure enough to be considered fully Jotun,” Laufey said calmly.

“Elven?”

Laufey grabbed his hair in gentle fist and smirked. “Only mixed children have hair. Also,” he traced a line on Loki's skin, “this means you have an elven heritage.”

“How much can you read from them?”

“A lot,” Laufey hummed. He gently wiped tears from Loki's cheeks that Loki had not even noticed.

His body was not ready to shift back. Rather than keep standing Laufey pulled at him until they were sitting side by side. Loki looked at what was visible of his skin again, his tunic was soft and thin and a little too big, easy to pull aside and watch the designs on his arms. His hands had claws. He assumed he had red eyes. All giants seemed to have the same eye color.

“I am never getting used to this,” he mumbled.

Laufey wrapped an arm over his shoulders and gave him a sort of half-hug. He did not think much about leaning against the old Jotun King while he tried to calm down enough to think clearly. It was nice to have someone touch him so readily. He wondered if perhaps Aesir had less of a need for physical contact than giants. It would explain why Thor was so much more at ease with the sparse affection from their parents.

“We can get used to a lot of things, the mind just needs time to adjust for some changes,” Laufey said.

Loki stayed what felt like hours until he was feeling more grounded, then he quickly changed to his regular form and slipped away from Laufey. He felt trapped. Uncomfortable. He could not sit still, not with so much flying through his head.

“I will be going for a walk, I think.”

“Helblindi will have a bit of free time,” Laufey offered, his nose had been buried in his book for a while, but now he focused solely on Loki, as if he was worth wasting so much time on. “Go see him. He has worried about you, since you stopped coming to us. He's always been gentle, you needn't worry.”

Loki nodded. He slipped away before he was tempted to do something stupid, like asking for another hug like a damned child. He wanted to be hugged again, but that was his pathetic need for affection speaking. He all but fled from the golden palace that had always been his home. He took a long, long walk before doing anything. Before he felt calm enough to be around people. He was confused and hurting, and the last people he wanted to see were his parents. They had lied, and he didn't want to think about how they might feel. What else they had hidden.

He wondered if Thor knew.

He hoped not.

After a few hours he felt empty rather than on the verge of tears, and his feet had carried him to the mountains. He huffed to himself, but he would rather be on Jotunheim during the day than in Asgard's sweltering heat. There was more than one portal into Jotunheim, but no one had bothered to check that. Of course, Loki had ignored the possibility as well back then, but a little magic found one easily.

It was almost worse being on Jotunheim, knowing that it was his real home world, questioning if his fascination with the realm was nothing but subconscious recognition of his true origin. He knew it was not the case, but suddenly he felt like everything was a lie and there was some sinister truth hidden under everything.

He felt something again, something ethereal that wanted to pull him toward something. It felt nice and safe, but he knew he could not trust strange feelings so readily. Instead he searched out Helblindi and found him with the help of some youngster who was all to eager to have Loki under the prince's supervision.

A guard mumbled with a smirk that the littlest Aesir prince was back, and Helblindi smiled at Loki.

“Did you think it odd that Jotunheim's cold does not bother me?” he asked without much preamble.

“Mm,” Helblindi stalled, “not really. You do not smell like an Aesir on your own. You just smell of the others around you.”

Loki gave a short, broken laugh. “Of course not.”

“You are hurt, come.”

Loki followed Helblindi and the few guards he had, did not even object that he was fine. He was fine physically, or as fine as he could be, but mentally he hurt so much he was almost lightheaded with it. Helblindi led him to a cave room, a large one with a sunken pit in the middle. Loki assumed it was used for sleep, the furs and other cloth items suggested as much.

“Take those off.” Helblindi nudged his boots and Loki removed them. He showed him to a large basin with water and made him wash his feet while Helblindi washed his own, then they washed their hands in a separate one. He remembered doing it the first time he had been on Jotunheim. Frost Giants sure were big on the whole cleanliness issue.

Only when they were clean did the Frost Giant sit down gracefully in the pit and gestured for Loki to join him. The guards had lit small orbs of light that floated near the ceiling, then they positioned themselves strategically around the room.

“Is this a bed?” Loki sat gingerly, not sure what to make of the haphazard mess. It was soft, at any rate.

“Bed, couch, nest, comfort. Tell me what is wrong, you did not come on your brother's behalf.” Helblindi grabbed Loki's arm and gently tugged off some of his leather armor. He realized he must have put it on before leaving the palace. He couldn't remember exactly, but he hadn't had it on when he spoke to Laufey.

Loki laughed again, no less broken this time. “No, I did not. Your father suggested I come, actually.” Instead of pressuring him, Helblindi stayed silent. Patience written all over his face while he worked on the buckles and fastenings. Loki relaxed and got more comfortable as the pieces of stiff armor were stripped from him. “I am not Aesir.” He gestured to his appearance. “This is a lie. Odin or Frigga, or both of them, must have put a spell on me as a child.”

Baby? Toddler? Loki had no memories of being any other species than Aesir. How early had Odin gotten a hold of him? Had it been a rescue or a capture? Laufey had said Odin. That he recognized the magic. He wanted to believe his mother was innocent, but was she? She was smart and cunning when she wanted to be. Odin was never underhanded in the ways she was.

Helblindi stopped when Loki was in a tunic and pants, but not before feeling the materials with his hands, and he had to admit it was nice to be free of the formal armor. He always got red marks on his skin from the heavy armors and leathers Asgard favored.

“And I guess you only just found out what you are?” Helblindi did not seem surprised, but Loki assumed the truth was written all over his face. He probably looked a mess. It sounded like Helblindi knew and simply wanted him to keep talking. It was not impossible that Laufey had sent word. Loki had spent a long time wandering around.

Loki nodded. “Your father showed me. I thought I knew who I was. I am young by our standards, but I am by no means a toddler.” He could not go on for a good while. He wished he was less pathetic. Thor would never weep over something so trivial. “It never occurred to me that my body might not be my own. That it would be a mere illusion.”

Helblindi reached out to cup his face and wiped his tears, the gentle touch surprised Loki even though it really should be expected by now. “The inside is the same. You are still Loki.”

“Do not tell anyone. Not yet.”

“If you wish. Do not think it your fault, you are not in the wrong. If my nose is correct, and it usually is, there is no shame in being what you are.”

“Your nose is not wrong,” Loki said in a monotone.

“Show me?”

Loki panicked a little. Laufey had been able to read the lines on his body easily enough. Perhaps they even told who his parents had been. Were? Loki had no way of knowing and he was absolutely sure that he wanted no more surprises any time soon. “Promise me I will not be dragged to some poor, mourning couple and -”

Helblindi shook his head. “I already agreed not to tell. Now, show me. I cannot force you, I have not inherited my father's magic.”

Loki nodded and closed his eyes while he changed back to the shape that was his original one. His mind rebelled at it, but his body felt better when he was in this form. He had not thought about it earlier, with Laufey, but his magic changed his clothes to fit the larger form with no conscious effort from him. He mentally thanked the rigorous training he had gone through to master magic.

When he opened his eyes again Helblindi was smiling as he traced the lines on Loki's face with his fingertips. That was absurd, it was nothing to smile about. But then, had it not been Helblindi who had said his name during their mourning ceremony?

“What?” Loki asked sullenly.

“Oh, shush. You need a hug.” And just like that he was hugged and gently wrestled down in the nest until he was on his side with Helblindi's larger form curled around him. As if that was natural even with strangers. Loki certainly would never have touched another Aesir so casually.

“Is cuddling some Frost Giant thing? You are an awfully touchy lot.” Or, at least Laufey and Helblindi were.

“Yes, I suppose so. We cuddle a lot by Aesir standards. It is a cold realm,” Helblindi said while he covered them in a thick fur. “Of course, we fuck a lot too. It takes tension away.”

Loki snorted softly.

“Leave your Aesir moral in Asgard. Sex is natural. A whole family normally sleep in one of these nests, and the children would be right next to their parents when they have sex. It is not embarrassing to us. We outlaw two things; getting close relatives pregnant, and forcing ourselves on someone not willing.”

“So sex between me and, say, Thor would be fine with you?”

Helblindi chuckled. “Have you looked at yourself without panicking yet, little princeling? I am betting you are a little bigger than he could handle. Unless you wanted to yield to him.”

Loki blushed and slapped at Helblindi.

“No harm in that. Yielding can be fun.”

Loki huffed. “I know. I am hardly a virgin. You are just too blunt.”

Helblindi stroked up and down his arm. It was lulling Loki to sleep and he did nothing to fight it. Freaking out took a lot of energy out of him. That and walking. And not sleeping enough. And not eating any meals. And -

Loki tried to recall the last time he had felt healthy and came up oddly blank. His first short stay on Jotunheim had left him feeling better. Alfheim had been alright.

“I am going to fall asleep if you keep that up,” he told Helblindi. He debated asking about that feeling, that pull, whatever it was. He felt like it could be a danger, or it had something to do with his Jotun biology, but he was so very tired.

“Good. We sleep during the day. Stay with me for a bit, it will be safe for you to sleep here.”

“What did you and Laufey argue over when Thor and I came here to negotiate?” It suddenly seemed urgent to know that, in case he was not as safe as he thought he was. In case it was all just a scheme. In case Helblindi was lying like Odin and Frigga lied.

“Whether or not to sacrifice your brother so that we could keep you here. Mother would not have been happy, to put things mildly.”

“Because I am one of you?”

“Because Odin _stole you_. She would gladly give him a dose of his own medicine. Make him suffer like we all suffered. It was a very dark time for us... Father nearly went mad with grief. I miss my siblings too, but it was worse for them, and sometimes they still do not think clearly. She would use it as a reason to start a war.”

“Thank you.”

“Do not thank me,” Helblindi said. “I care nothing about Thor and in any other situation I would gladly kill him.”

“And me?”

“No, you are different from them,” Helblindi touched Loki's forehead. It felt nice to have him follow the lines on the skin. “It is not just your blood. If you had been Aesir we would have asked to have you as our liaison.”

Loki smiled a little.

“You are too skinny -”

“I know!” Loki burst out. Then he sighed as the fight drained away as soon as it had appeared. “Sorry, but I already had to listen to that for years and decades and centuries. Mother worries, but I do not like food. I makes me ill, or if I do like something it always tends to be some obscure thing.”

Helblindi hummed thoughtfully and the vibration of it was soothing. “I think we could find some things you will find palpable. Did you like what you had here?”

“I suppose,” Loki admitted with a bit of growing uneasiness. Did he dislike the food on Asgard because he was not supposed to eat those things?

“Good. We will sleep, and after we will eat.”

“Fine.”

 

* * *

 

He was not sure exactly when after that he fell asleep, but he did.

As he slowly woke up Loki moved an arm and yelped when it was Jotun blue, before his panic settled a bit when all the most recent memories returned to him.

Helblindi was still with him. It felt nice. Inner turmoil aside Loki enjoyed having someone close by. It felt safer. He never really had people with him while he slept. Lovers slipped away as soon as they could and Thor had only suffered through Loki's nightly clinginess while they were both children.

It took a long while before Loki bothered to sit up. He had slept a long time by his own standards. He felt rested. It was warm, but not overbearing, and soft, and he felt wrapped up in a cocoon of nice things. That pulling feeling was less pronounced, more like a soft presence, and it did not feel malignant. He wondered what it was, but he was comfortable and he wanted to soak it up. It was almost a shame to signal that he was awake, but he suddenly felt very hungry and Helblindi had promised to feed him.

“You could rest more, if you like.”

Loki shook his head. “I have never slept much.”

Helblindi ruffled his hair, but not the way Thor did. There was no rough play fight underneath, more of a caress. Touchy, gentle lot. Loki was confused.

“Let us eat then,” Helblindi said.

Loki nodded and rose. He considered putting his boots and armor back on, but Helblindi led him out with a hand on his shoulder. He led Loki to a room where food was set out. They grabbed bowls, picked out food sat down and ate. They were alone, and Loki was fine with that, he ate in silence with Helblindi next to him.

“I should go back.”

“You could stay,” Helblindi said and placed the used bowl aside. “My father will be in Asgard a while longer. At least go back with him.”

“I cannot,” Loki said, thinking of all the things he had to do. “I have duties I must attend to.”

“If you could?”

Loki hesitated. If he could? He certainly _could_. Thor could do his own damned duties and learn what it was like to rule a realm rather than rely on Loki to do all the boring bits.

His family was in Asgard.

Supposedly.

“Do you know if Loki is my real name?” he asked hesitantly.

“It is,” Helblindi said certainly.

“Do I have a family here?”

“You do.”

Loki sighed, chewed his lower lip, unsure if he wanted to meet them.

“You are not ready yet,” Helblindi guessed quietly.

“No, it... I knew I was adopted,” Loki said quietly. “I knew I was no true son of Odin. That does not bother me much, I have had time to get used to it. I just...” He paused and grit his teeth. “Why? I cannot figure out why. Odin had more blood on his hands than the court executioner and yet he stops to pick up a baby.”

“Best case scenario? He buys into the idiocy that says we leave runts to die.”

“Worst case?” Loki asked quietly, both needing to hear and worried he would not want the knowledge.

“He needed a pet sorcerer to make him lock gems.”

“I cannot do that.”

Helblindi scoffed. “Have you truly ever tried? Few enough know the spellwork, I doubt anyone outside our realm would have a clue how to even begin. The only child to survive, the only child he saves and it is the one with magic? No, it is too convenient to be a coincidence.”

Loki closed his eyes and shook his head.

Helblindi wrapped strong arms around him and held him until Loki was sure it was late.

 

* * *

 

Once back on Asgard – and his chest hurt again, whatever the reason behind it was it started to feel ominous – Loki was informed by the guards outside his rooms that he had a visitor. He sighed, but then schooled his face and went to the sitting room attached to his chambers. It was where visitors were deposited if he had any. He would rather not deal with nobles or family, but –

“You look a mess,” Laufey said.

Despite himself, Loki smiled. “Are you not needed somewhere?”

“Yes. Here.” Laufey shook a bottle meaningfully. “Little princeling is too skinny. This will help.”

Loki took the bottle when it was held out to him. It had no labeling, nothing to indicate what it was. He fidgeted with the bottle, then uncapped it and drank the content after deciding that it did not smell of poison.

“I take it my wolf cub fed you?” Laufey asked.

“Helblindi? Yes.”

Laufey took the empty bottle and handed him another. “Drink them as often as you can manage.”

Loki took it. He felt full and more alert, so he assumed they were nutrition potions like the ones fed to the soldiers if they arrived underweight to the army. It was different from the one Asgard used, it tasted lighter and it had no adverse effects on him.

“Come find me in the evening. We brought food with us, I know you must have more questions.”

“Most of my questions I honestly want no answer to.”

Laufey cupped his jaw. “The biggest fear is of the unknown, the truth often makes the what-ifs pale and wither.” He held eye contact for a long time. “At least come and eat, unless Farbauti forces my hand I am willing to give you the time you need to cope.”

“I will come and eat,” Loki promised. He hated the constant nagging about food.

“Good.” Laufey moved his large hand to ruffle Loki's hair. Loki pointedly did not think about what his real father might be like. Would he be nice? Would he hate Loki? “Remember to drink that.”

Loki nodded. Could he handle having two sets of parents if neither wanted him? There was a lump in his throat that had nothing to do with the potion he had swallowed. Could he survive having another set of parents, if the new pair wanted him?

Laufey left, and Loki was alone in his rooms.

He pulled his clothes off and went to his bathroom to wash up. Out of curiosity more than anything else he shifted and looked at his blur skin in the polished metal. Not exactly a mirror, but it showed his shape well enough.

He peeked down and noted a few differences. A quick touch revealed no extra anatomical parts he was not familiar with. He was still all male, but his cock was hidden in a sheath and his testicles seemed to be internal. He could still feel them in he pushed the skin below his sheath. Perhaps it was an adaptation to the cold of Jotunheim. He was loathe to stay in the monstrous shape longer than he had to, but he looked over the rest of his body before shifting again. He washed quickly and then dressed for a day at court.

 

 

 


	9. The King Of Monsters

Thor was in no mood to sit in a meeting room all day. Laufey's advisor Thiazi had been unfailingly polite the day before, but a bore. Laufey himself could have driven anyone mad with his unwillingness to settle anything of worth.

He looked over to his father, but Odin looked as calm as any other time. To be fair, Odin was not very willing to settle anything important either. Thor wanted to curse his father for forbidding Loki from attending the negotiations with Jotunheim. Loki was always better at dealing with foreign ambassadors and royalty.

When the Frost Giants entered the room they spoke a language Odin clearly did not speak. His frown said as much. “Is it a dialect?” Thor whispered.

“No, it sounds like the old Empirical Elven.”

Thor frowned as well. “I thought it was a dead language?”

“It still thrives on Svartalfheim,” Thiazi said. “Good morning, Allfather, Prince Thor.”

“You deal with Svartalfheim?” Odin asked Laufey.

“We trade with them,” Laufey said nonchalantly. “As we have done for a long time.”

“So two monsters do get along?” Thor asked as a jest.

 

* * *

 

“I have no idea how to do this,” Thor muttered.

Loki was unusually quiet and still. He barely moved at all. “Well, what does he want?” Loki asked eventually. “Apart from not being _insulted_.”

“I wish I knew.”

Loki sighed. “Weapons? Armor? Does he need help with bandits? What problems does he have that we can help with?”

Thor shrugged.

Loki looked disappointed.

“I know you would rather be there, and I want you there -”

“No, you want me to do the work for you,” Loki said quietly, quiet enough that Thor almost missed it.

“You are better suited for it,” Thor said.

Loki frowned. “What does he want?” he whispered, and Thor realized Loki was not frowning at him, but puzzling over Laufey.

“Apart from you.”

Loki looked at Thor as if struck.

“No, never worry, I will not sell you to those monsters,” Thor hurried to say. “You are my brother, not some prized stallion.”

“Horse jokes?” Loki hissed.

“Oh come on, you are the only one who still remembers that story.”

“No, Thor. _No_. The Frost Giant merchants who were here knew about that story.” Loki slapped him on the arm. “Jotunheim has been cut off from the other realms for _centuries_.”

Thor groaned. “I was drunk! I had no idea it would turn out so popular!”

Loki glared, but his anger gave way to that stillness, that apathy, all too soon. He drew in on himself and seemed to be lost in his own head.

“Are you losing sleep again?” Thor asked. Sometimes Loki got weird over the summers.

“If we were not brothers, would you put up with me?”

Thor was about to deny it, but thought better of it. Loki was clearly in a vulnerable mindset. “Of course.” Truthfully, though, Loki was too different from everything Thor valued. He had come to appreciate that difference, to see that it held benefits, but he would not have sought someone like Loki out on his own.

 

* * *

 

Odin and Thiazi stood off to the side of the sparring rink. Thor sized Laufey up, determined not to underestimate his opponent.

Thor charged first, but Laufey was faster than he had anticipated and with a loud smacking sound he had backhanded Thor hard enough to make him fall on his ass.

“Aw, I thought you were good at this,” Laufey taunted.

Thor got up again and this time started to circle. He was undefeated on Asgard, but he had been bested a few times on Vanaheim. They cheated, though. “I am.”

“Youth and pride,” Laufey said, “no technique.”

Thor charged, and was again hit hard enough to lose his footing.

“You think you know how to fight, but all you rely on is strength.”

Thor rose up a second time. “And you do not?”

Laufey grinned, but his eyes held no mirth. “Did I hit you too hard? Poor little child! Did you think I ended up on the throne because I am so pretty?”

“I am not a child.”

“Your pretty brother said the same. And yet you are nothing more than a boy.”

“Leave my brother out of this.”

Laufey smirked. “But he such a _sweet_ little thing. I think he would make a good stew.”

Thor almost managed to strike Laufey, but the giant danced away just in time.

“If I win, little prince, will you submit?” Laufey asked in a sing-song voice. “Hm?”

Thor tried to strike again, but found his wrist grabbed in a hard grip. It felt like he had been pinned by a mountain.

“I hear little whispers, that it is much easier for an Aesir man than a woman to take our... size, I wonder if that holds true.”

“Laufey!” Odin barked.

“Well, what else could he do to amuse me?” Laufey asked innocently. “He clearly has not learned enough about fighting to be any fun.”

“Have you no honor?” Thor asked.

“You said I am a _monster_ ,” Laufey said, “what do monsters know of honor?”

“Perhaps this was not your best idea, Allfather,” Thiazi said.

“They are at least talking now,” Odin muttered.

“You _do know_ he had to kill his adult siblings to take the throne?” Thiazi asked.

“The Culling,” Laufey grinned. “Lovely sport.” He used his grip on Thor to swing him and throw him across the rink. Thor landed on his feet, if barely. “The rules are simple. Each adult get one knife, two to each fight, the winner fights the next in line until there is no line.”

“How many did you kill?” Thor asked.

Laufey smirked at him. “Sixty, or thereabout.”

“Sixty-four,” Thiazi corrected. “You and Ulv were alive by the end of it.”

Laufey hummed, something Thor had heard Frost Giants do a lot. It was like they were unable to tolerate silence.

“Barbarians,” Thor scoffed. He charged, trying to not be so obvious in what he planned, but with a few quick steps Laufey had kicked him and sent him to the ground again.

“Ready to yield now?”

Thor grabbed his side in a vain attempt to ease the pain, but shook his head. “I spoke with Loki, he said to ask what you wanted.”

“Oh, you spoke to your brother? Of course, I could hardly expect intelligent question from you. Is that how you plan to reign? Asking your brother for advice at every turn?”

Thor attacked again. This time Laufey tripped him.

“No, no, stay down, will you? I much prefer to see pigs where they belong.”

 

* * *

 

Once the spar had been called off by Odin, Thor washed up in his rooms. He had not seen so many bruises on his own skin since he was still in the double digits. Thankfully only Odin and Thiazi had watched his humiliation, his friends would have teased him mercilessly.

Loki had to be with them next meeting. Thor was tired of Odin's excuses. Loki had gotten Laufey to agree to trade, surely there was something about Loki that made Frost Giants trust him.

 


	10. The Cruel Queen

Days passed and the negotiations were about as drawn out as one could expect when Laufey did everything to draw them out. Loki was mildly amused, but his schedule was full enough that he had little free time. Enough to sneak off to eat with the giants. Enough for Laufey to find him in his rooms and force him to drink more potions.

Embarrassingly he often dozed off after eating if there was nothing to panic about, no work to get done. Laufey would smirk and pet his hair when he woke up.

He had always approached his duties as a prince with more enthusiasm than Thor. Among the things expected of him was to solve petty disputes. Squabbles like which farmer had the right to a stretch of land, or which noble was slandering who, took up his entire day at the very least once a week. Odin could overrule him, but he rarely bothered to. Too few people complained when he judged, because for all that Loki was a lying trickster he was fair towards the subjects. Not kind in all things, but fair.

Thor was supposed to cover half of it, but since he rarely ever did his share of the work Loki covered for his brother rather than ignore it and force Odin to do it. Odin had more than enough work as it was and could use the time off. Loki, for one, felt he should help his parents where he could even if Thor did not. Even if they never were his parents. Even if they had lied to him. Family was important.

Was his Jotun family important?

When he was done holding audiences that day he quickly washed up before heading to the baths. A long bath would usually help to calm him down and get the idiotic arguments of the commoners out of his brain. Hopefully he would not think too much about his hidden blue skin, just a spell away from his normal Aesir appearance. Hopefully he would think less about any family he had on Jotunheim.

The palace had large pools for swimming, some heated while others were kept cool. The cooler pools were popular during summer, but Loki used them year round. He enjoyed bathing and staying clean more than most, and the quiet atmosphere often present in the baths was like a soothing balm on his nerves. When it was too crowded during late summer he would visit the small lakes by the mountains, since they were fed from the glaciers and were always cold. He wondered how many hints to his heritage there was. How many clues had he ignored?

Annoyed at his life in general, he forcefully threw his clothes off and left them in a pile. The servants knew by now to leave him alone. He could do as he pleased.

The water was cool, not cold, but it soothed him anyway.

Floating on his back with his eyes closed he heard the silent approach of another but did not care enough to acknowledge it. He would prefer solitude and most people gave him a wide berth. Whoever it was would either ignore him, or they would make themselves known. He was not moving unless he had to.

Loki shivered in pure delight when the water became colder still, and opened his eyes with a smile.

“Hello, little one,” Laufey purred. Frost Giants purr? Loki had never heard it before, but then he was just scratching the surface when it came to knowledge about them.

“Done annoying my father and brother for the day?” Loki asked cheekily.

“They felt it might go faster if they only talked to my advisor.” Laufey walked out to the deep end where Loki was floating. His head and shoulders were still over the water's surface. “I figured I should check to see how you were.”

Again. Laufey was like a mother hen since Loki's heritage had been revealed. On one hand that was nice, but on the other he wished he could have that kind of attention from his family. How often had he not wished one of his parents would give a damn and be honest at it?

“He seems decidedly unwilling to be here, though. Your advisor. Not to mention, you still have to agree. Seems counterproductive to convince an advisor.” Loki ignored the prodding towards his well-being. He was not sure how he was feeling, except fantastic because of the colder temperature.

“He lost his whole blood family in the war. Even the littles and the elders. Only has his second son and daughter left. He would sooner eat Odin's heart than agree to anything, but he is polite. Used to be a politician, before.”

Loki frowned. “Am I the only one you lot can stand to be around?”

“No, but you are one of very few most of us like. Then again, there is a _natural_ reason for you understanding us so well...”

They were alone. Loki noticed that the guards were politely staying outside. Well, that or they wanted no part in Loki's untimely death, seeing as he was alone with a monster. He shifted to his other form, he refused to think of it as his real one. Not just yet. Soon maybe, but not now.

He was still skinny, but he had gained enough weight that he did not look like he was about to blow away in a mild wind. More like he had looked in his Aesir shape, but that shape was now more filled out. He was grateful for that, and for the food. He had not had an upset stomach in a long time now. He slept better too. Not as well as when Helblindi had cuddled him, but well enough.

“How come you travel without guards?” Loki asked. It had bothered him for a while. Most royalty when they visited would bring large entourages.

“Do I?” Laufey made a motion with his hand, a signal of sorts, and four guards became visible for a few seconds.

“Clever.”

Laufey caressed his limbs. That purring sound was heard again. Laufey was clearly in the mood to play. Perhaps it was not the wisest option, but Loki was intrigued. Would it feel different in this form? Did this body respond to different things? Odin could very well kill him as a traitor, but then again, Odin had lied to him his whole life. Why should he not do something to take his mind off all the buzzing thoughts?

“You do realize that this is a horribly bad idea and you will not be getting any favors out of it,” Loki said with no real objection in his voice. He liked the differences, liked that Laufey was stronger and bigger.

“I am bored, you are not unwilling and sex is far less of a big deal to us anyway. Seems like a fine idea.”

“Fine, but only because I am curious.”

“Ooh. That is right, need to test the limits all over again... hm?”

Loki grinned. He liked it when he found people who were of the same opinion as him when it came to sex. Elves were more to his taste, normally, since they cared little about who they fucked or if that person had been with others before.

“We can breathe water,” Laufey said.

“Truly?”

“Yes. Our element is water. The pigs call us Frost Giants, but ice is water. Relax.” Laufey pushed him below the surface with a gentle hand on his chest. He could have escaped, but he really was curious. Loki felt his body act on reflex, swallowing water and then... breathing it. Obviously his lungs were different than regular Aesir lungs. He was pushed deeper still, Laufey following him down until they were on the bottom of the pool.

His skin was nipped, so he nipped back. He wondered a little how sex worked between two males when they both had sharp teeth and sharper claws, but the way Laufey pawed at him he would find out soon.

Something colder than flesh entered him, though it was small enough to just be a finger wide. Ice, he thought. That worked well enough. It was cool, slippery and smooth. Loki moaned as it grew thicker on every other thrust, but no regular sound came, it sounded more like what one would expect from aquatic animals. Under water his vocal cords did little to produce the noises he was used to hearing.

The slow stretch was nice, even as he steadily became uncomfortable with the situation. He was underwater and at the mercy of a giant. Everything he had ever been taught made this seem like a bad idea. Then again, what was life without a little excitement?

Laufey nipped at his skin again, nuzzled into his neck. Loki felt something pull at him, almost as if it touched his mind. His soul. He gave in and followed the pull, relaxing his body. Laufey bit then, not a little nip but a hard bite, where his neck met his shoulder and he did not let up.

It was scary how good it felt.

It should hurt him, but it just felt good. Exciting. Relaxing, actually. It did nothing to trigger any reflexes, he felt no need to put a hand to the wound the way he did in Aesir skin. The only thing he felt was a need to bite back.

After the ice the cock felt warm. Loki writhed against Laufey, but tried to limit his movements with those sharp teeth still buried in his flesh. He tried to relax his body, but it kept writhing on autopilot and he realized that Laufey was not thrusting into him as much as his own body was spasming around the cock.

Loki decided that his body probably knew more than he did and followed the flow, so to speak. Laufey stopped biting then, but he still kept his mouth over the wound.

He was unsure of how much time passed before Laufey pulled out and brought them to the surface, by the shallower end of the pool. Loki was still dazed enough that he did not freak out when he could suddenly breathe air again after coughing and spitting some water out. He held on to the edge of the pool when Laufey nudged him to it.

“Best not stay under too long or you will panic,” Laufey said. It was a solid logic.

Loki shifted back to his Aesir form when he heard footsteps approaching. Laufey continued his stroking and nipping, but was much gentler with his Aesir shape. Fandral, of all people, walked in on them. He looked murderous, but only stayed to glare disapprovingly at Loki before storming out.

“Friend?” Laufey asked, lips against his ear.

“Thor's friend,” Loki said automatically. The Idiots Three were Thor's friends. Loki was just the skinny younger brother who tagged along sometimes. They liked to take advantage of his magic skills even as they mocked him for them.

“He looked possessive.”

“We fucked. Twice. It is no big deal.” Loki sighed. “Well, it was not to me. This is going to be such a huge deal... I should just drown myself.” The things Fandral would spread around in the rumor mill would no doubt be unpleasant.

“This could prove _fun_ ,” Laufey chuckled. “Drowning will not work.”

Loki growled.

“Shift.”

With another growl Loki did. Laufey manhandled him until Loki had his back on the smooth, slippery floor and his ass hanging over the edge of the pool. Laufey stood between Loki's thighs, his large hands had a death grip on Loki's hips.

Loki lifted himself up on his elbows so he could watch a bit of what was going on. Laufey's cock started to slide into his ass easily despite Loki's mind screaming that it was way too large to fit. His inner muscles started massaging the intruder as soon as Laufey did a rough thrust and buried himself to the hilt.

The mewling, wanton sounds Loki made surprised him even though he had always been vocal in bed. He wanted to move more, but Laufey held his hips still. Loki was sure that even without Fandral no doubt telling everyone and their unborn child what was going on, the Einherjar guards outside heard enough to piece it together. He should have cared more about that, but at the moment he was a bit preoccupied with something he enjoyed much more than gossip.

“Why does it work like this?” Loki asked, having found some brain cells that still functioned normally. “This does not normally happen.”

“Your body was spelled to act Aesir. I am not sure why males react like females, but it is much easier under water like this,” Laufey rumbled.

“And the biting?”

“We bite a lot.” Laufey bit Loki's leg briefly, then hovered with his mouth just over the bite mark on his lower neck. Loki whined when a soft tongue lapped at the swollen wound, but with how hard he got it was an easy thing to forgive.

Occasionally Laufey would thrust roughly, and Loki decided that his reputation could go hang itself. Sex between Frost Giants was awesome. He came three times before Laufey filled him. He was prepared to call it a day, but something in him responded to being filled, to the warmth of the semen. He felt his muscles cramp sharply and came so hard he barely knew his own name at the end of it.

Laufey cooed at him while he came down from his high.

“That was spectacular,” he mumbled. It might not have been as eloquent as normal.

“Good. Youngsters should not start out with bad experiences.” Laufey stroked up and down his arms with his palms. “If they give you too much grief just kill them.”

Loki huffed, then laughed. He was in a good mood now. “Is that how you solve problems?”

Laufey moved so that they were nose to nose. “It is how I solve problems with Asgard's court.”

He allowed Laufey to cuddle because he felt like it would make everything better. They kissed for a while and Loki grunted into it when Laufey's cock slipped out of his hole. He was not sore like he was used to, but he felt empty.

Eventually he started worrying about being found like that – _again_ – and covered his sudden nervousness by getting up and shifting back. By the time they went their separate ways Loki was tired, but overall still happy. He had marks all over and the only thing keeping him from touching them while grinning like an idiot was his stubborn pride.

Fandral had been busy, Loki noted when servants and nobles alike sneered at him and talked behind his back. It was not the first time he was the topic of palace gossip, but he had never seen it spread this fast.

But that last orgasm had been _good_. He kind of wanted another go, never mind the rumor mill.

 

* * *

 

Loki did not stay in his rooms that night, which was just as well since he had been told by one of the guards that Thor and Frigga were both looking for him. That was a discussion he did not want to have, so he spent half the night playing some type of board game with Laufey's advisor. From time to time Laufey went back, and this was seemingly one of those times.

“I am worthless at this,” Loki deducted when he lost for the tenth time. He was a decent hand at most games, normally, but either he failed to focus properly or he had misunderstood the rules.

“So is Laufey,” Thiazi shrugged. “You both think too much.”

There was a commotion outside, so Loki shifted to his Aesir shape. He could hear Thor yelling something.

“Sounds like that brother of yours.”

Loki nodded. “I had hoped to avoid him.”

“Would he hurt you?”

Loki shrugged. Thor mostly just had a rash temper, but it was Odin who worried him. He nervously fingered the carved game piece he was still holding.

“Loki!” Thor yelled, from the sound of it he was close by.

Loki placed the game piece on the board and rose up. The guards uncloaked from their invisibility when Thiazi made a hasty motion of his hand. When Thor rounded a bend in the corridor and became visible to Loki, and Loki became visible to Thor, he pointed an accusing finger.

“You tell me it is not the truth, brother!” Thor bellowed.

“What is not the truth, Thor?” Loki asked as calmly as he was capable of. “That I just lost ten games in a row with Thiazi here? Because this game makes no sense to me.”

Thor had marched forward, but stopped before entering the room. “Fandral claims he walked in on you and Laufey fucking.”

Loki smirked when he saw Thor shiver from the cold and take a step back. “Mm.”

“How could you...?”

“They are not _that_ much bigger, brother,” Loki said cheekily. “You never get upset when I have a bit of fun on Alfheim.”

Thor wisely bit his tongue rather than comment something that most likely contained the word monster. “Where is Laufey now?” he asked instead.

Loki shrugged. “How should I know? Is he not _your_ guest, brother?”

Thor frowned.

Loki rubbed a hand over his face. Thor would never make a competent ruler at this rate.

“Do not make this about me,” Thor said.

“Maybe he took another bath?” Loki suggested with a grin. “I hear they like water.”

Thor went to grab Loki, but Thiazi swiftly stepped between them.”Children,” he chided.

“This is not a concern of yours,” Thor said heatedly, on the verge of screaming.

“The welfare of children is everyone's concern,” Thiazi said. “You misunderstand our culture. We do not see intercourse as a big event, it is as meaningful to us as a sparring match is to you. With how often you exclude our King from meetings I am surprised he has not found more pretty things to entertain him.”

Loki rolled his eyes and pointed up. “Or stuck more library books to the ceiling by freezing them.” He was sure the shape spelled out some rune, but he could not read Jotun.

Suddenly Loki felt that pull again, which was odd because he normally only felt it on Jotunheim.

Thiazi shrugged. “Boredom breeds chaos.”

As if summoned, they heard Laufey talk in the corridor a fair bit away. He spoke fast, using his native language and seemed to be talking to a female.

“Ah, here he comes,” Thiazi said. Thor spun around. “And he brought the Queen.”

Loki's first impression of Laufey's Queen was that she was pretty. She was a Jotun, sure, but her almost elfin features made her a good looking one even though he was brought up on the Aesir standards of beauty. Her skin was a few shades paler than Laufey's, a grayish blue shade that looked more like it could be a halfway point between Elven and Jotun.

_Laufey grabbed his hair in gentle fist and smirked. “Only mixed children have hair. Also,” he traced a line on Loki's skin, “this means you have an elven heritage.”_

Loki furiously shoved the memory away and resumed watching the foreign queen. She looked slender, but strong, like an agile dancer or an elf warrior might. She looked like she could lay ruin to cities with a laugh. It was her eyes that made Loki hesitate, they had a cold fury in them that he did not like. And that was coming from the guy who had recently slept with her husband. He quietly wondered how much trouble he was in. But then again, they supposedly had a much more relaxed view on sex in general.

Farbauti had long, thick hair that shone blue-black in the golden light. Her face was framed by numerous small braids tied off with beads of carved bone and jade on thin leather strips. He was almost certain her hair was the only thing covering her breasts, and he made an effort not to stare at them to find out.

Helblindi followed quietly behind the royal couple.

Einherjar suddenly scrambled into view as well, to Laufey's amusement. “They are a little late to save your virtue, princeling,” he noted.

Thor looked like he was about to explode from righteous anger.

“Prince Thor, your father requests your presence in the throne room,” one of the Einherjar called out. “And your brother... if he can walk.”

Thor made to grab Loki by the arm, but Farbauti grabbed Thor's wrist. “Run along,” she said, voice strained with emotion and Loki doubted it was anything but pure hatred. She stared Thor down until he obeyed her.

“I'd better go,” Loki said in a rush and hurried after Thor.

 

* * *

 

Both Thor and Loki stood in the throne room to show off a united court, something they rarely did because usually Odin alone was enough to scare people into obedience.

Loki had not yet confronted his father about his heritage. He could barely stand to think about it for too long. Odin had taken him from Jotunheim and then allowed him to grow up thinking his own kin were monsters and beasts. That alone was cruel. There was also the nagging suspicion that there were motives involved which had nothing to do with mercy. That he had been taken, _stolen_ , not saved.

Loki stood where he was supposed to, but he was yearning to move. He was full of nervous energy.

Laufey had sauntered in moments after Loki, his usual disregard for proper protocols and politeness written clearly in his smirk. Then again, on Jotunheim he answered to no one. It was Farbauti who stepped forward towards Odin, head held high, with all the grace of a predator on the hunt. For all that her blood seemed mixed she was nearly as tall as her husband.

“My, my,” she sneered, “look at this. You have certainly aged since last I saw your ugly pink face. Such a short lifespan you have.”

“Is there a reason for this visit?” Odin asked tersely.

“Do not play coy with me,” Farbauti warned with a hiss. “You took a child from my realm. I am taking him back now that we know he is alive.”

“I am not handing anyone over to you,” Odin objected immediately.

“Is Thor really a Frost Giant, then?” one of the nobles spoke up.

“He is tall enough,” another joined in.

“Sure is,” Loki snickered mostly because he had the bad habit of laughing when scared, but quickly schooled his face when Thor glared murderously at him. Thor had not been amused when he had finally figured out the soap was the problem behind his color shifts after showing up bright blue for midsummer. Really, the guy needed to spend more time cleaning himself. Biting his lip, Loki kept quiet. It certainly had broken the tension.

Farbauti sized Thor up with a cold glare and seemed to find him lacking, which appeared to make Thor uneasy. “No, he _stinks_ too much. You know who I want, thief.”

Her eyes slid to Loki for a heartbeat, a heartbeat that Loki's heart decided to skip.

“Could we discuss this in private?” Odin sighed, pretending to be bored, but Loki could sense his nervousness. His mother had sometimes claimed he was like a predator smelling prey. Loki figured if he was born to monsters it must be in his nature. Farbauti certainly seemed to be all tooth and claw.

“Yes, please,” Loki mock-pleaded. “I might freak out!”

“Loki,” Thor hissed, still thinking the joke was on him. As if the universe revolved around Thor.

To be fair, it mostly did. Today, though... Loki sighed. If the Jotun Queen was half as fearsome as her reputation then obeying her might be best. She did not seem like she wanted to tear into him for sleeping with her better half.

“Hold on, hold on, do not kill anyone,” Loki muttered as he started to walk towards Helblindi. Safest option, as far as he was concerned. Helblindi seemed much gentler than the others. Laufey was kind, sure, but he would switch moods faster than one could blink.

He effortlessly shifted to his Jotun form as he passed Farbauti. He was much more used to it now. Never let it be said he did not enjoy a bit of drama. Everyone was staring, except the three Jotuns, or more correctly the _other_ Jotuns. He had to remember that he was Jotun too.

Loki took a moment to enjoy the shock and confusion.

Helblindi placed a hand on Loki's shoulder, then used the grip to pull him into a hug.

“Nice to see you are still the one in control,” Farbauti sneered at a shell shocked Odin. She turned around and cast a teleportation spell. Loki saw one of the gems in her hair glow and wanted to howl with laughter. Why put lock gems in stupid things like staffs or swords, anyway?

And then they were gone.

 

 


End file.
